Thanks to the generosity of one of its board members, the Metropolitan Opera announced today that a number of primeorchestra seats, usually $175 - $220, will be available for $30 for all nine performances of John Adams’s Doctor Atomic. Agnes Varis, a managing director of the Met board, and her husband Karl Leichtman, have purchased $500,000 worth of some of the best orchestra seats for Doctor Atomic, so that they can be redistributed at this lower price. Dr. Varis and Mr. Leichtman already are the new production sponsors of Doctor Atomic, John Adams’s opera about the invention of the atomic bomb, which opens at the Met on October 13. Dr. Varis and Mr. Leichtman also are the funders of the Met’s successful Rush Ticket program, which provides $100 orchestra seats for $20 on Monday through Thursday evenings during the course of the entire season.