It was a day of rehearsals all around Lincoln Center, and plenty of well-known artists were hard at work — but not in their usual places.
Alan Gilbert, the music director of the New York Philharmonic, was visiting the orchestra next door, conducting a rehearsal of Mozart’s “Don Giovanni” in the pit at the Metropolitan Opera. Maria Kowroski, a principal dancer at New York City Ballet, was downstairs practicing the Christopher Wheeldon choreography that she dances in the Met’s production of Bizet’s “Carmen.” And Kelli O’Hara, the Broadway star who had appeared in “The Merry Widow” at the Met the night before, was over at the Lincoln Center Theater at the first rehearsal for the new Bartlett Sher staging of “The King and I.”
The flurry of plaza-crossing at Lincoln Center, which all took place on a single day, last Thursday, was notable because it was once relatively rare. Although the founders of Lincoln Center had hoped that concentrating so many great cultural institutions in one place would foster artistic cross-pollination, it sometimes seemed as if the theaters were walled off from one another by their white travertine facades.
But in recent years, that has begun to change: Institutions that once competed, sometimes bitterly, over audiences, resources and donors are increasingly teaming up in ways both large and small. In one particularly striking example, Lincoln Center and the New York Philharmonic, which almost went through a messy divorce in 2003 when the Philharmonic flirted with a return to its old home at Carnegie Hall, announced last month that they were joining forces to stage several contemporary operas together.
“I think there is more and more a feeling that this is allowed, not to mention desirable,” Mr. Gilbert said during a break from rehearsing “Don Giovanni,” which was scheduled to open on Wednesday. In recent years, City Ballet stars including Sara Mearns, Tiler Peck and Robert Fairchild have danced with the Philharmonic at Avery Fisher Hall.
“This attitude of pooling our resources and working for a shared good, a shared goal, has even changed in my brief experience of working here,” said Mr. Gilbert, who became the Philharmonic’s music director in 2009. “Historically, there had been this idea that in order to succeed — and this is an oversimplification — but that in order to succeed, others can’t succeed. But I see it rather, to use a kind of clichéd metaphor, as the rising tide bringing everything up.”
Both Mr. Gilbert and his predecessor at the Philharmonic, Lorin Maazel, have conducted at the Met in past seasons, but for decades it was rare for a Philharmonic music director to be seen there.
Mr. Gilbert was not the only conductor forsaking his usual podium at Avery Fisher Hall to rehearse at the Met that day. Louis Langrée, the music director of the Mostly Mozart Festival and Orchestra, was at the opera house rehearsing “Carmen.”
Mr. Langrée said that he thought it made sense to break down institutional boundaries, since many great composers did. “Tchaikovsky did amazing operas, amazing symphonies, amazing chamber music, amazing ballet,” he said. “He’s the same man.”
Artists and administrators said in interviews that a number of factors had contributed to the rise in collaborations and that the warmer relationship between the Philharmonic and Lincoln Center could help them weather the planned renovation of Avery Fisher Hall. They also said that the personalities of the current crop of leaders there had changed the environment.
Since Peter Gelb became general manager of the Met in 2006, he has turned to City Ballet and American Ballet Theater, for dancers and leading choreographers, to the Philharmonic for conductors, and to Lincoln Center Theater for actors and directors — and to collaborate on developing new works.
“It’s a case of different parts creating a greater sum,” Mr. Gelb said in an interview.
Some see it as a way for Lincoln Center to live up to its potential. The performing arts complex, after all, was envisioned as a mid-20th-century urban renewal project. And while its monumentality has delighted generations of balletomanes, opera buffs, music fans and theatergoers, the benefits of having all those theaters and concert halls next to one another are not always clear. Art lovers may enjoy hopping from one museum to another in a day, but you can only see one concert or opera or ballet or show each night — not to mention the competition for restaurant reservations and taxis on nights with multiple performances.
Jed Bernstein, who took over last year as the president of Lincoln Center, which acts as a landlord, an umbrella group and a presenter, said that inspiring collaborations had always been a goal of the complex. “Historically, it hasn’t always worked out that way,” he said. “But I think we are in the beginning of a time where that is no longer a barrier. I think there is a hunger for this kind of collaborative effort.”
The Juilliard School also helps knit the disparate strands of Lincoln Center together. Its annual collaboration with the Met, a concert presentation of Gluck’s “Iphigénie en Aulide,” will be performed there on Tuesday, next Thursday and on Feb. 14, conducted by Jane Glover.
The school said that it had 15 faculty members who play with the Philharmonic, including 10 principal players; seven in the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra and two in the New York City Ballet Orchestra. Both Wynton Marsalis, the artistic director of Jazz at Lincoln Center, and Mr. Gilbert, are on the Juilliard faculty.
Backstage at the Met, Mr. Gilbert said that he dreamed of even more ambitious exchanges.
“What I’d really like to do, and this is pie in the sky, is I’d like to trade orchestras,” he said. “To have the New York Philharmonic come do a show in this theater and have the Met take subscription weeks for us. It’s not unheard-of in other places to switch.”
Then a voice came over the loudspeakers indicating that it was almost time to resume the “Don Giovanni” rehearsal. “Eight-minute call for statues, please, eight-minute call for statues,” it said.
Mr. Gilbert smiled. “Only at the Met,” he said.
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