I suppose everyone will have heard about the $25 million gift that the Bass family recently gave to the Metropolitan Opera, the largest gift of its kind and one that it is blessedly unrestricted which basically means that the Met can start using it straight away to fill in its mildly worrying operating deficit of $4 million, the end result of a steady decline in subscriptions and ticket sales.

And while $25 million sounds like a lot, the rather unfortunate fact remains that it all be gone in the next five years leaving the Met in the uncomfortable position of having to look for money elsewhere (it receives no public funding and must come up with all of its operating costs through ticket sales and contributions).

Meanwhile, James Levine, the Met's artistic director in a recent interview with New York magazine sounded characteristically sanguine or perhaps indifferent to the whole affair, which is a position that’s rather easy for him to take considering his dual roles at the Met and the BSO (Boston Symphony Orchestra).

Everyone else, though, might do well to raise their heads a bit. For, after all, there aren’t all that many Basses, both in terms of money and as regards propensity for displays of extravagant generosity. And Bill Gates’ doesn’t seem all that interested in saving classical music prefering the admittedly more pressing issues of Tuberculosis and AIDS in developing nations.

In truth the Basses are a frankly generous lot. Besides their support of the Met they also lavish huge yearly sums to Carnegie Hall and have promised them a vast deal more upon their deaths.

Unfortunately, the list of people like them is truly tiny. And one wonders how rosy the future will look for Mr Levine when they've gone.