New York City Opera
The New York City Opera is an American opera company located in Manhattan in New York City. The company has been active from 1943 through its 2013 bankruptcy, and again since 2016 when it was revived.
The opera company, dubbed "the people's opera" by New York mayor Fiorello La Guardia, was founded in 1943. The company's stated purpose was to make opera accessible to a wide audience at a reasonable ticket price. It also sought to produce an innovative choice of repertory, and provide a home for American singers and composers. The company was originally housed at the New York City Center theater on West 55th Street in Manhattan. It later became part of the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts at the New York State Theater from 1966 to 2010. During this time it produced autumn and spring seasons of opera in repertory, and maintained extensive education and outreach programs, offering arts-in-education programs to 4,000 students in over 30 schools. In 2011, the company left Lincoln Center due to financial pressures and moved its offices to 75 Broad Street in Lower Manhattan. In the 2011−12 and 2012−13 seasons, NYCO performed four operas at different venues in New York City, including the Brooklyn Academy of Music. On October 1, 2013, following an unsuccessful emergency fund-raising campaign, the company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.
In January 2016, a nonprofit group, NYCO Renaissance, revived the opera company under new management when its reorganization plans for the company to leave bankruptcy and re-launch performances were approved in bankruptcy court. The group, led by Roy Niederhoffer, a hedge fund manager and former board member of the NYCO, announced plans to present a season of opera in 2016−17. The first opera was Puccini's Tosca, presented at the Rose Theater at Jazz at Lincoln Center in January 2016.
During its 70-year-plus history, the NYCO has helped launch the careers of many great opera singers including Beverly Sills, Sherrill Milnes, Plácido Domingo, Maralin Niska, Carol Vaness, José Carreras, Shirley Verrett, Tatiana Troyanos, Jerry Hadley, Catherine Malfitano, Samuel Ramey, and Gianna Rolandi. Sills later served as the company's director from 1979 until 1989. More recent acclaimed American singers who have called NYCO home include David Daniels, Mark Delavan, Mary Dunleavy, Lauren Flanigan, Elizabeth Futral, Bejun Mehta, Robert Brubaker and Carl Tanner. NYCO has similarly championed the work of American composers; approximately one-third of its repertoire has traditionally been American opera. The company's American repertoire has ranged from established works to new works. NYCO's commitment to the future of American opera was demonstrated in its annual series, Vox, Contemporary Opera Lab, in which operas-in-progress were showcased, giving composers a chance to hear their work performed by professional singers and orchestra. The company has also occasionally produced musicals and operettas, including works by Stephen Sondheim and Gilbert and Sullivan.
Early years: 1943–51
The NYCO was founded as the New York City Center Opera, and originally made its home at the New York City Center on West 55th Street, in Manhattan. City Center's chair of the finance committee, Morton Baum, Mayor Fiorello La Guardia and council president Newbold Morris hired Laszlo Halasz hired the company's first director, serving in that position from 1943 until 1951. Given the company's goal of making opera accessible to the masses, Halasz believed that tickets should be inexpensive and that productions should be staged convincingly with singers who were both physically and vocally suited to their roles. To this end, ticket prices during the company's first season were priced at just 75 cents to $2, and the company operated on a budget of $30,463 during its first season. At such prices the company was unable to afford the star billing enjoyed by the Metropolitan Opera. Halasz, however, was able to turn this fact into a virtue by making the company an important platform for young singers, particularly American opera singers.The company's first season opened on February 21, 1944, with Giacomo Puccini's Tosca, and included productions of Friedrich von Flotow's Martha and Georges Bizet's Carmen, all of them conducted by Halasz. Several notable singers performed with the company in the first season, including Dusolina Giannini, Jennie Tourel and Martha Lipton, who was immediately poached by the Met after their NYCO debuts. Other notable singers Halasz brought to the NYCO included Frances Bible, Adelaide Bishop, Débria Brown, Mack Harrell, Thomas Hayward, Dorothy Kirsten, Brenda Lewis, Eva Likova, Leon Lishner, Regina Resnik, Norman Scott, Ramón Vinay, and Frances Yeend.
Under Halasz's leadership, the NYCO became the first major opera company to have an African American performer in 1945. This was in the production of Leoncavallo's Pagliacci, with Todd Duncan's performance as Tonio. Lawrence Winters and Robert McFerrin were other notable African American opera pioneers to sing with the company during this period. The first African American woman to sing with the NYCO was soprano Camilla Williams, as the title heroine in Madama Butterfly in 1946; a performance which marked the first time a black woman sang a role with a major American opera company. The NYCO was also the first American opera company to hire a black conductor. Everett Lee broke the color barrier for opera conductors in America when the NYCO hired him to conduct performances of La traviata in April 1955.
Halasz had a tumultuous relationship with the company's board of directors, given his strong opinions about what the NYCO should be. For one, he supported the idea of performing foreign language works in English to make opera more accessible to American audiences. He insisted on offering at least one production in English every season. The issue that created, the most tension between Halasz and the board was Halasz's commitment to staging new works by American composers and rarely heard operas at the opera house. The first New York City premiere presented by the company was Richard Strauss's Ariadne auf Naxos on October 10, 1946, with Ella Flesch in the title role, Virginia MacWatters as Zerbinetta, and James Pease as the music master. The production was described by the contemporary press as "record breaking", and it put the company "on the map". The NYCO subsequently toured Ariadne to His Majesty's Theatre, Montreal, giving the opera's Canadian premiere.
The first world premiere at the house was William Grant Still's Troubled Island in 1949. It was notably the first grand opera composed by an African-American to be produced in a major opera house. In the fall of 1949, the NYCO revived Prokofiev's comic opera The Love for Three Oranges, which had not been seen in America since its unsuccessful Chicago premiere in 1921. The new production, directed by Vladimir Rosing, turned into a smash hit and was brought back for two additional seasons.
Also in 1949, Halasz scheduled the world premiere of David Tamkin's The Dybbuk to be performed by the NYCO in 1950. However, the NYCO board opposed the decision and ultimately the production was postponed for financial reasons. Halasz, however, rescheduled the work for inclusion in the 1951/52 season. Uneasy with Halasz's bold repertoire choices, the NYCO board insisted in 1951 that Halasz submit his repertory plans for their approval. As a result, he resigned, along with several members of his conducting staff, including Jean Morel, and two of his eventual successors, Joseph Rosenstock and Julius Rudel. Faced with the resignations of most of their creative staff, the board reluctantly backed down and The Dybbuk was given its world premiere at the NYCO on October 4, 1951. But tensions remained high between Halasz and the board, and they fired him in late 1951 when Halasz became involved in union disputes.
Rosenstock and Leinsdorf: 1952–57
After Halász was fired, the NYCO board appointed Joseph Rosenstock, who was already working as a conductor with the company, as the new director. He served in that post for four seasons, during which time he continued in Halász's steps of scheduling innovative programs with unusual repertoire mixed in with standard works. He notably staged the world premiere of Aaron Copland's The Tender Land, the New York premiere of William Walton's Troilus and Cressida, and the United States premieres of Gottfried von Einem's The Trial and Béla Bartók's Bluebeard's Castle. Rosenstock was also the first NYCO director to include musical theatre in the company's repertoire, with a 1954 production of Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein II's Show Boat; a production which starred Broadway musical veteran and operatic soprano Helena Bliss. This decision was ridiculed by the press, but Rosenstock felt justified as the musical played to a packed house. Meanwhile, the company's staging of Donizetti's opera Don Pasquale that season only sold 35 percent of the house seats.In January 1956 the NYCO board accepted Rosenstock's resignation. He stated that he left because he was faced with too much non-musical work such as bookings and business negotiations. The board appointed Erich Leinsdorf, who had worked as a conductor at the Metropolitan Opera, the Cleveland Orchestra, and the Rochester Philharmonic, to take his place. Leinsdorf stayed with the company for only one season. He was fired after his ambitious program of contemporary and unusual works for the 1956 season failed to soothe financial problems at the NYCO, and drew harsh criticism from the press. The press particularly did not care for his new productions of Jacques Offenbach's Orpheus in the Underworld and the American premiere of Carl Orff's Der Mond. However, Leinsdorf did have one major triumph with the first professional production of Carlisle Floyd's Susannah with Phyllis Curtin in the title role, and Norman Treigle as the Reverend Blitch. The production was a critical success with both audiences and critics, and the opera went on to become an American classic.