It was grim news from Manhattan this week, the announcement that ChevronTexaco will cease sponsorship of the Saturday afternoon broadcasts of The Metropolitan Opera at the close of the 2003-2004 season. The Texas Company, later Texaco, sponsored the live broadcast of Mozart's The Marriage of Figaro on 7 December 1940, a production with Licia Albanese and Ezio Pinza, inaugurating the longest continuous sponsorship in broadcast history.



It's difficult to understand how the folk at Chevron can have no imaginative sense of what those Metropolitan Opera broadcasts have meant to so many people through so many years, and no sense either of the goodwill for the Texaco name that they're throwing away.



Here is a complete list, with principals, of Metropolitan Opera broadcasts since 1931. The list is maintained at the MetManiac site.