One day after she was quoted in the New York Times saying that Metropolitan Opera director Peter Gelb was “phasing her out,” soprano Ruth Ann Swenson received a warm ovation from the Met crowd attending her performance in a Handel opera. “But if she looked at the back of the orchestra, Swenson might have seen a possible cause for the Met’s reduced commitment: several rows of mostly empty seats. She doesn’t have a big recording company advertising her heavily, and other sopranos are better box office.”