New York City Opera
Encyclopedia
The New York City Opera is an American
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 opera
Opera
Opera is an art form in which singers and musicians perform a dramatic work combining text and musical score, usually in a theatrical setting. Opera incorporates many of the elements of spoken theatre, such as acting, scenery, and costumes and sometimes includes dance...

 company located in New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...

.

The company, called "the people's opera" by New York Mayor Fiorello La Guardia, was founded in 1943 with the aim of making opera financially accessible to a wide audience, producing an innovative choice of repertory, and providing a home for American
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 singers and composers. The company was a part of the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts
Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts
Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts is a complex of buildings in the Lincoln Square neighborhood of New York City's Upper West Side. Reynold Levy has been its president since 2002.-History and facilities:...

 from 1966 to 2010 during which 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 thirty schools. In May 2011, however, it was announced that the financially troubled company would leave Lincoln Center. In the 2011-2012 season NYCO will perform four operas at various venues in New York City, including the Brooklyn Academy of Music
Brooklyn Academy of Music
Brooklyn Academy of Music is a major performing arts venue in Brooklyn, a borough of New York City, United States, known as a center for progressive and avant garde performance....

.

During its nearly 70 year history, the NYCO has helped launch the careers of many great opera singers including Beverly Sills
Beverly Sills
Beverly Sills was an American operatic soprano whose peak career was between the 1950s and 1970s. In her prime she was the only real rival to Joan Sutherland as the leading bel canto stylist...

, Sherrill Milnes
Sherrill Milnes
Sherrill Milnes is an American operatic baritone most famous for his Verdi roles. From 1965 until 1997 he was associated with the Metropolitan Opera....

, Plácido Domingo
Plácido Domingo
Plácido Domingo KBE , born José Plácido Domingo Embil, is a Spanish tenor and conductor known for his versatile and strong voice, possessing a ringing and dramatic tone throughout its range...

, Carol Vaness
Carol Vaness
Carol Vaness is an American lyric soprano.Carol Vaness was born in San Diego and launched her professional career in 1977 with the San Francisco Opera...

, José Carreras
José Carreras
Josep Maria Carreras i Coll , better known as José Carreras , is a Spanish Catalan tenor particularly known for his performances in the operas of Verdi and Puccini...

, Renée Fleming
Renée Fleming
Renée Fleming is an American soprano specializing in opera and lieder. Fleming has a full lyric soprano voice.Fleming has performed coloratura, lyric, and lighter spinto soprano repertoires. She has sung roles in Italian, German, French, Czech, and Russian, aside from her native English. She also...

, Jerry Hadley
Jerry Hadley
Jerry Hadley was an American operatic tenor. He received three Grammy awards for his vocal performances in the recordings of Jenůfa , Susannah , and Candide...

, Catherine Malfitano
Catherine Malfitano
Catherine Malfitano is an American operatic soprano. She is generally considered to be one of America's leading operatic sopranos...

, Bejun Mehta
Bejun Mehta
Bejun Mehta is an American countertenor who performs in operas, recitals, and concerts. He records for Harmonia Mundi.-Early life and family:...

, Samuel Ramey
Samuel Ramey
Samuel Edward Ramey is an American operatic bass with a long, distinguished career.During his best years, he was greatly admired for his range and versatility, having possessed a sufficiently accomplished bel canto technique to enable him to sing the music of Handel, Mozart, Rossini, yet power...

, and Gianna Rolandi
Gianna Rolandi
Gianna Rolandi is an American soprano. Following a highly successful 20-year national and international operatic career, Rolandi retired from performing in 1994, and is currently director of and principal instructor at the Lyric Opera of Chicago's Patrick G. and Shirley W...

. Sills later served as the company's director from 1979-1989. More recent acclaimed American singers who have called NYCO home include David Daniels, Mark Delavan
Mark Delavan
Mark Delavan is an American operatic bass-baritone. He made his professional debut in 1986 at the San Francisco Opera in a small role in Giuseppe Verdi's Don Carlos. He spent the next three years performing in numerous comprimario roles with the company...

, Mary Dunleavy
Mary Dunleavy
Mary Dunleavy is an American soprano who has performed with major opera companies and orchestras around the world. She is a native of Old Saybrook, Connecticut.She grew up in New Jersey and graduated from Pascack Hills High School in 1984...

, Lauren Flanigan
Lauren Flanigan
Lauren Flanigan is an American operatic soprano who has had an active international career since the 1980s. She has enjoyed a particularly fruitful partnership with the New York City Opera, appearing with the company almost every year since 1990...

, Elizabeth Futral
Elizabeth Futral
Elizabeth Futral is an American coloratura soprano who has won acclaim throughout the United States as well as in Europe, South America, and Japan....

, and Carl Tanner
Carl Tanner
Carl Tanner is an American operatic tenor.-Biography and career:Born into "very modest means," Carl Tanner's earliest exposure to music was in the form of country icons such as John Denver, Willie Nelson, and Roy Clark...

.

NYCO similarly champions 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 (e.g., Douglas Moore's The Ballad of Baby Doe
The Ballad of Baby Doe
The Ballad of Baby Doe is an opera by the American composer Douglas Moore that uses an English-language libretto by John Latouche. It is Moore's most famous opera and one of the few American operas to be in the standard repertory...

, Carlisle Floyd
Carlisle Floyd
Carlisle Floyd is an American opera composer. The son of a Methodist minister, he based many of his works on themes from the South...

's Susannah
Susannah
Susannah is an opera in two acts by American composer Carlisle Floyd, who wrote the libretto and music while a member of the piano faculty at Florida State University. Floyd adapted the story from the Apocryphal tale of Susannah and the Elders, though the latter story has a more positive ending...

 and Leonard Bernstein
Leonard Bernstein
Leonard Bernstein August 25, 1918 – October 14, 1990) was an American conductor, composer, author, music lecturer and pianist. He was among the first conductors born and educated in the United States of America to receive worldwide acclaim...

's Candide
Candide (operetta)
Candide is an operetta with music composed by Leonard Bernstein, based on the novella of the same name by Voltaire. The operetta was first performed in 1956 with a libretto by Lillian Hellman; but since 1974 it has been generally performed with a book by Hugh Wheeler which is more faithful to...

) to new works (e.g., Rachel Portman
Rachel Portman
Rachel Mary Berkeley Portman, OBE is a British composer, best known for her film work. She was the first female composer to win an Academy Award in the category of Best Original Score...

's The Little Prince
The Little Prince (opera)
The Little Prince, subtitled A Magical Opera, is an opera in two acts by Rachel Portman to an English libretto by Nicholas Wright, based on the 1943 book of the same name by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry...

 and Mark Adamo
Mark Adamo
Mark Adamo is an Italian American composer and librettist born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. While he has composed the symphonic cantata "Late Victorians, "Four Angels: Concerto for Harp and Orchestra," and six substantial choral works, the composer’s principal work has been for the opera house:...

's Little Women
Little Women (opera)
Little Women is the first opera composed by American composer Mark Adamo to his own libretto after Louisa May Alcott's tale of growing up in New England after the American Civil War, Little Women. The opera also includes text by John Bunyan , Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Little Women (1998) is the...

). NYCO's commitment to the future of American opera is demonstrated in its annual series, Vox, Contemporary Opera Lab, in which operas-in-progress are showcased, giving composers a chance to hear their work performed by professional singers and orchestra. The company has also occasionally produced musical
Musical theatre
Musical theatre is a form of theatre combining songs, spoken dialogue, acting, and dance. The emotional content of the piece – humor, pathos, love, anger – as well as the story itself, is communicated through the words, music, movement and technical aspects of the entertainment as an...

s and operetta
Operetta
Operetta is a genre of light opera, light in terms both of music and subject matter. It is also closely related, in English-language works, to forms of musical theatre.-Origins:...

s including works by Stephen Sondheim
Stephen Sondheim
Stephen Joshua Sondheim is an American composer and lyricist for stage and film. He is the winner of an Academy Award, multiple Tony Awards including the Special Tony Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Theatre, multiple Grammy Awards, a Pulitzer Prize and the Laurence Olivier Award...

 and Gilbert & Sullivan.

The early years: 1943–1951

The NYCO was founded as the New York City Center Opera and originally made its home at the New York City Center
New York City Center
New York City Center is a 2,750-seat Moorish Revival theater located at 131 West 55th Street between 6th and 7th Avenues in Manhattan, New York City. It is one block south of Carnegie Hall...

 on West 55th Street
55th Street (Manhattan)
55th Street is a two-mile-long, one-way street traveling east to west across Midtown Manhattan.-Sutton Place South:*The route officially begins at Sutton Place South which is on a hill overlooking FDR Drive....

. Laszlo Halasz
Laszlo Halasz
Laszlo Halasz was an American opera director, conductor, and pianist of Hungarian birth. In 1943 he was appointed the first director of the New York City Opera; a position he held through 1951...

 was the company's first director, serving in that position from 1943-1951. Given the company's goal to make 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
Metropolitan Opera
The Metropolitan Opera is an opera company, located in New York City. Originally founded in 1880, the company gave its first performance on October 22, 1883. The company is operated by the non-profit Metropolitan Opera Association, with Peter Gelb as general manager...

. 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 in February 1944, and included productions of Giacomo Puccini
Giacomo Puccini
Giacomo Antonio Domenico Michele Secondo Maria Puccini was an Italian composer whose operas, including La bohème, Tosca, Madama Butterfly, and Turandot, are among the most frequently performed in the standard repertoire...

's Tosca
Tosca
Tosca is an opera in three acts by Giacomo Puccini to an Italian libretto by Luigi Illica and Giuseppe Giacosa. It premiered at the Teatro Costanzi in Rome on 14 January 1900...

, Friedrich von Flotow
Friedrich von Flotow
Friedrich Adolf Ferdinand, Freiherr von Flotow was a German composer. He is chiefly remembered for his opera Martha, which was popular in the 19th century....

's Martha
Martha (opera)
Martha, oder Der Markt zu Richmond is a 'romantic comic' opera in four acts by Friedrich von Flotow, set to a German libretto by Friedrich Wilhelm Riese and based on a story by Jules-Henri Vernoy de Saint-Georges....

 and Georges Bizet
Georges Bizet
Georges Bizet formally Alexandre César Léopold Bizet, was a French composer, mainly of operas. In a career cut short by his early death, he achieved few successes before his final work, Carmen, became one of the most popular and frequently performed works in the entire opera repertory.During a...

's Carmen
Carmen
Carmen is a French opéra comique by Georges Bizet. The libretto is by Henri Meilhac and Ludovic Halévy, based on the novella of the same title by Prosper Mérimée, first published in 1845, itself possibly influenced by the narrative poem The Gypsies by Alexander Pushkin...

, all of them conducted by Halasz. Several notable singers performed with the company in the first season, including Jennie Tourel
Jennie Tourel
Jennie Tourel was a Russian-American operatic mezzo-soprano, known for her work in both opera and recital performances....

, Martha Lipton
Martha Lipton
Martha Lipton was an American operatic mezzo-soprano.-Biography:Lipton was born in New York City. She won a scholarship to the Juilliard School and made her debut as Pauline in Tchaikovsky's opera The Queen of Spades for the New Opera Company in Manhattan in 1941...

, and Hugh Thompson, who were all immediately poached by the Met after their NYCO debuts. Other notable singers Halasz brought to the NYCO included Frances Bible
Frances Bible
Frances Lillian Bible was an American operatic mezzo-soprano who had a thirty long year career at the New York City Opera between 1948 and 1978. She also made a fair number of opera appearances with other companies throughout the United States, but only made a limited number of appearances abroad...

, Adelaide Bishop
Adelaide Bishop
Adelaide Bishop was an American operatic soprano, musical theatre actress, opera director, stage director, and voice teacher. She began her career appearing in Broadway musicals as a teenager during the early 1940s...

, Débria Brown
Débria Brown
Débria M. Brown was an American operatic mezzo-soprano who had an active international career that spanned five decades. She was part of the first generation of black opera singers to achieve wide success and is viewed as part of an instrumental group of performers who helped break down the...

, Mack Harrell
Mack Harrell
Mack Harrell was an American baritone who was regarded as one of the greatest concert singers of his generation....

, Dorothy Kirsten
Dorothy Kirsten
Dorothy Kirsten was an American operatic soprano.-Biography:...

, Eva Likova
Eva Likova
Eva Likova was an American operatic soprano of Czech descent. She was notably one of the major sopranos at the New York City Opera during the company's early years. She also made guest appearances with a number of opera houses in North America and Europe, enjoying a particularly fruitful...

, Leon Lishner
Leon Lishner
Leon Lishner was an American operatic bass-baritone. He was particularly associated with the works of Gian Carlo Menotti, having created parts in the world premieres of four operas by that composer...

, Regina Resnik
Regina Resnik
Regina Resnik is an American operatic singer.Regina Resnik, the American mezzo-soprano, started a dramatic career ten months after earning her B.A. in Music at Hunter College. The role was Lady Macbeth under Fritz Busch in December, 1942 with the New Opera Company. A few months later, she sang...

, Norman Scott
Norman Scott (bass)
Norman Scott was an American operatic bass. He had a long and fruitful association with the Metropolitan Opera in New York City from 1951 up until his death seventeen years later. His repertoire at the Met included well over 50 roles, and he gave a total of 927 performances at the house during his...

, Ramon Vinay
Ramón Vinay
Ramón Vinay was a famous Chilean operatic tenor with a powerful, dramatic voice. He is probably best remembered for his appearances in the title role of Giuseppe Verdi's tragic opera Otello....

, and Frances Yeend
Frances Yeend
Frances Yeend was an American classical soprano who had an active international career as a concert and opera singer during the 1940s through the 1960s...

 among others. In 1945, the company became the first major opera company to have an African American
African American
African Americans are citizens or residents of the United States who have at least partial ancestry from any of the native populations of Sub-Saharan Africa and are the direct descendants of enslaved Africans within the boundaries of the present United States...

 performer. This was in the production of Leoncavallo's Pagliacci
Pagliacci
Pagliacci , sometimes incorrectly rendered with a definite article as I Pagliacci, is an opera consisting of a prologue and two acts written and composed by Ruggero Leoncavallo. It recounts the tragedy of a jealous husband in a commedia dell'arte troupe...

 with Todd Duncan
Todd Duncan
Robert Todd Duncan was an American baritone opera singer and actor.-Biography:Todd Duncan was born in Danville, Kentucky in 1903. He obtained his musical training at Butler University in Indianapolis with a B.A. in music followed by an M.A...

's performance as Tonio. Lawrence Winters
Lawrence Winters
Lawrence Winters , bass-baritone, was an African American opera singer who had an active international career from the mid 1940s through the mid 1960s. He was part of the first generation of black opera singers to achieve wide success and is viewed as part of an instrumental group of performers who...

 and Robert McFerrin
Robert McFerrin
Robert McFerrin Sr. was the first African-American male to sing at the Metropolitan Opera in New York City...

 were other notable African American opera pioneers to sing with the company during this period. The first African American woman to sing with the company was soprano
Soprano
A soprano is a voice type with a vocal range from approximately middle C to "high A" in choral music, or to "soprano C" or higher in operatic music. In four-part chorale style harmony, the soprano takes the highest part, which usually encompasses the melody...

 Camilla Williams
Camilla Williams
Camilla Ella Williams is an American operatic soprano and the first African American to receive a contract with a major American opera company.-Biography:...

 as the title heroine in Madama Butterfly
Madama Butterfly
Madama Butterfly is an opera in three acts by Giacomo Puccini, with an Italian libretto by Luigi Illica and Giuseppe Giacosa. Puccini based his opera in part on the short story "Madame Butterfly" by John Luther Long, which was dramatized by David Belasco...

 in 1946. Winters and Williams later went on to sing the title roles in the most complete recording made up to that time of Gershwin's Porgy and Bess
Porgy and Bess
Porgy and Bess is an opera, first performed in 1935, with music by George Gershwin, libretto by DuBose Heyward, and lyrics by Ira Gershwin and DuBose Heyward. It was based on DuBose Heyward's novel Porgy and subsequent play of the same title, which he co-wrote with his wife Dorothy Heyward...

, for Columbia Masterworks Records
Columbia Masterworks Records
Columbia Masterworks Records was a record label started in 1927 by Columbia Records.It was intended for releases of classical music and artists, as opposed to popular music, which bore the regular Columbia logo. Masterworks Records' first release, in 1927, was a complete performance of the...

 in 1951.

Halasz had a somewhat 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 area that brought 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
Richard Strauss
Richard Georg Strauss was a leading German composer of the late Romantic and early modern eras. He is known for his operas, which include Der Rosenkavalier and Salome; his Lieder, especially his Four Last Songs; and his tone poems and orchestral works, such as Death and Transfiguration, Till...

's Ariadne auf Naxos
Ariadne auf Naxos
Ariadne auf Naxos is an opera by Richard Strauss with a German libretto by Hugo von Hofmannsthal. Bringing together slapstick comedy and consuming beautiful music, the opera's theme is the competition between high and low art for the public's attention.- First version :The opera was originally...

 on October 10, 1946 with Ella Flesch in the title role, Vasso Argyris as Bacchus, Virginia MacWatters
Virginia MacWatters
Virginia MacWatters was an acclaimed American coloratura soprano.Born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, MacWatters studied at the Curtis Institute of Music, and sang 611 Broadway performances of Adele in Rosalinda , conducted by Erich Korngold, from 1942 to 1944...

 as Zerbinetta, and Polyna Stoska as the composer. The first world premiere at the house was William Grant Still
William Grant Still
William Grant Still was an African-American classical composer who wrote more than 150 compositions. He was the first African American to conduct a major American symphony orchestra, the first to have a symphony performed by a leading orchestra, the first to have an opera performed by a major...

's Troubled Island
Troubled Island
Troubled Island is an American opera in three acts composed by William Grant Still , with a libretto begun by poet Langston Hughes and completed by Verna Arvey...

 in 1949. It was notably the first grand opera
Grand Opera
Grand opera is a genre of 19th-century opera generally in four or five acts, characterised by large-scale casts and orchestras, and lavish and spectacular design and stage effects, normally with plots based on or around dramatic historic events...

 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
Vladimir Rosing
Vladimir Sergeyevich Rosing , aka Val Rosing, was a Russian-born operatic tenor and stage director who spent most of his professional career in England and the United States...

, turned into a smash hit and was brought back for two additional seasons.

Also in 1949, Halasz scheduled the world premiere of David Tamkin
David Tamkin
David Tamkin was an American composer of Jewish descent. He devoted much of his professional career as an arranger, composer [uncredited] and orchestrator of film scores for Hollywood movies. He worked on more than 50 films between 1939 and 1970.-Biography:Tamkin was born in Chernihiv, Ukraine...

's The Dybbuk
The Dybbuk (opera)
The Dybbuk is an opera in three acts by composer David Tamkin. The work uses an English libretto by Alex Tamkin, the composer's brother, which is based on S. Ansky’s Yiddish play of the same name. Composed in 1933, the work was not premiered until October 4, 1951 when it was mounted by the New York...

 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 1951-1952 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, Thomas Martin and two of his eventual successors, Joseph Rosenstock
Joseph Rosenstock
Joseph Rosenstock was a Polish Jewish conductor.-Early years:He worked at the State Opera in Wiesbaden before being brought into the Metropolitan Opera in New York to replace Artur Bodanzky in 1928...

 and Julius Rudel
Julius Rudel
Julius Rudel is an American opera and orchestra conductor who emigrated to the United States from Austria at the age of 17 and studied conducting at the Mannes College of Music in New York City. He then forged a 35-year career with the New York City Opera, from 1944 to 1979, and was the Music...

. 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: 1952–1957

After Laszlo Halász was fired, the NYCO board appointed Joseph Rosenstock
Joseph Rosenstock
Joseph Rosenstock was a Polish Jewish conductor.-Early years:He worked at the State Opera in Wiesbaden before being brought into the Metropolitan Opera in New York to replace Artur Bodanzky in 1928...

, 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
Aaron Copland
Aaron Copland was an American composer, composition teacher, writer, and later in his career a conductor of his own and other American music. He was instrumental in forging a distinctly American style of composition, and is often referred to as "the Dean of American Composers"...

's The Tender Land
The Tender Land
The Tender Land is an opera with music by Aaron Copland and libretto by Horace Everett, a pseudonym for Erik Johns. The opera tells of a farm family in the Midwest of the United States. Copland was inspired to write this opera after viewing the Depression-era photographs of Walker Evans and...

, the New York premiere of William Walton
William Walton
Sir William Turner Walton OM was an English composer. During a sixty-year career, he wrote music in several classical genres and styles, from film scores to opera...

's Troilus and Cressida
Troilus and Cressida (opera)
Troilus and Cressida is the first of the two operas by William Walton. The libretto was by Christopher Hassall, his own first opera libretto, based on Chaucer's poem Troilus and Criseyde...

, and the United States premieres of Gottfried von Einem
Gottfried von Einem
Gottfried von Einem was an Austrian composer. He is known chiefly for his operas influenced by the music of Stravinsky and Prokofiev, as well as by jazz. He also composed pieces for piano, violin and organ.-Biography:...

's The Trial and Béla Bartók
Béla Bartók
Béla Viktor János Bartók was a Hungarian composer and pianist. He is considered one of the most important composers of the 20th century and is regarded, along with Liszt, as Hungary's greatest composer...

's Bluebeard's Castle
Bluebeard's Castle
Duke Bluebeard's Castle is a one-act opera by Hungarian composer Béla Bartók. The libretto was written by Béla Balázs, a poet and friend of the composer. It is in Hungarian, based on the French fairy tale "Bluebeard" by Charles Perrault...

. Rosenstock was also the first NYCO director to include musical theatre
Musical theatre
Musical theatre is a form of theatre combining songs, spoken dialogue, acting, and dance. The emotional content of the piece – humor, pathos, love, anger – as well as the story itself, is communicated through the words, music, movement and technical aspects of the entertainment as an...

 in the company's repertoire with a 1954 production of Jerome Kern
Jerome Kern
Jerome David Kern was an American composer of musical theatre and popular music. One of the most important American theatre composers of the early 20th century, he wrote more than 700 songs, used in over 100 stage works, including such classics as "Ol' Man River", "Can't Help Lovin' Dat Man", "A...

 and Oscar Hammerstein II
Oscar Hammerstein II
Oscar Greeley Clendenning Hammerstein II was an American librettist, theatrical producer, and theatre director of musicals for almost forty years. Hammerstein won eight Tony Awards and was twice awarded an Academy Award for "Best Original Song". Many of his songs are standard repertoire for...

's Show Boat
Show Boat
Show Boat is a musical in two acts with music by Jerome Kern and book and lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II. It was originally produced in New York in 1927 and in London in 1928, and was based on the 1926 novel of the same name by Edna Ferber. The plot chronicles the lives of those living and working...

; a production which starred Broadway musical veteran and operatic soprano Helena Bliss
Helena Bliss
Helena Bliss is a retired American actress and singer. A talented soprano, she actively performed in musicals, operettas, and operas in the United States, both on stage and on television and radio, from the 1930s through the 1950s...

. 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 rarely heard opera Don Pasquale
Don Pasquale
Don Pasquale is an opera buffa, or comic opera, in three acts by Gaetano Donizetti. The librettist Giovanni Ruffini wrote the Italian language libretto after Angelo Anelli's libretto for Stefano Pavesi's Ser Marcantonio ....

 that season only sold 35 percent of the house seats.

In January 1956 the NYCO board accepted Rosenstock's resignation, who stated that he left because of too much non-musical work such as bookings and business negotiations. The board appointed Erich Leinsdorf
Erich Leinsdorf
Erich Leinsdorf was a naturalized American Austrian conductor. He performed and recorded with leading orchestras and opera companies throughout the United States and Europe, earning a reputation for exacting standards as well as an acerbic personality...

, who had worked as a conductor at the Metropolitan Opera, the Cleveland Orchestra
Cleveland Orchestra
The Cleveland Orchestra is an American orchestra based in Cleveland, Ohio. It is one of the five American orchestras informally referred to as the "Big Five". Founded in 1918, the orchestra plays most of its concerts at Severance Hall...

, and the Rochester Philharmonic, to take his place. Leinsdorf stayed with the company for only one season, being fired after his ambitious program of contemporary and unusual works for the 1966 season failed to sooth 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
Jacques Offenbach
Jacques Offenbach was a Prussian-born French composer, cellist and impresario. He is remembered for his nearly 100 operettas of the 1850s–1870s and his uncompleted opera The Tales of Hoffmann. He was a powerful influence on later composers of the operetta genre, particularly Johann Strauss, Jr....

's Orpheus in the Underworld
Orpheus in the Underworld
Orphée aux enfers is an opéra bouffon , or opéra féerie in its revised version, by Jacques Offenbach. The French text was written by Ludovic Halévy and later revised by Hector-Jonathan Crémieux....

 and the American premiere of Carl Orff
Carl Orff
Carl Orff was a 20th-century German composer, best known for his cantata Carmina Burana . In addition to his career as a composer, Orff developed an influential method of music education for children.-Early life:...

's Der Mond
Der Mond
Der Mond is an opera in one act by Carl Orff based on a Brothers Grimm fairy tale with a libretto by the composer. It was first performed on 5 February 1939 by the Bavarian State Opera in Munich under the direction of Clemens Krauss...

. However, Leinsdorf did have one major triumph with the first professional production of Carlisle Floyd
Carlisle Floyd
Carlisle Floyd is an American opera composer. The son of a Methodist minister, he based many of his works on themes from the South...

's Susannah
Susannah
Susannah is an opera in two acts by American composer Carlisle Floyd, who wrote the libretto and music while a member of the piano faculty at Florida State University. Floyd adapted the story from the Apocryphal tale of Susannah and the Elders, though the latter story has a more positive ending...

 with Phyllis Curtin
Phyllis Curtin
Phyllis Curtin is an American classical soprano who had an active career in operas and concerts from the early 1950s through the 1980s. She was known for her creation of new roles such as the title role in the Carlisle Floyd opera Susannah, Catherine Earnshaw in Floyd's Wuthering Heights, and in...

 in the title role, and Norman Treigle
Norman Treigle
Norman Treigle was an American operatic bass-baritone, who was acclaimed for his great abilities as a singing-actor, and specialized in roles that evoked villainy and terror....

 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.

Rudel: 1957–1979

After Leinsdorf was fired, the NYCO board canceled its 1957 spring season and eventually appointed Julius Rudel
Julius Rudel
Julius Rudel is an American opera and orchestra conductor who emigrated to the United States from Austria at the age of 17 and studied conducting at the Mannes College of Music in New York City. He then forged a 35-year career with the New York City Opera, from 1944 to 1979, and was the Music...

 as the new general director of the company. Rudel had been hired by the NYCO straight out of college in 1944, and had worked on the conducting staff there for the past 13 years. Under Rudel's leadership, the company reached new artistic heights, drawing critical praise for its performances of both standard and adventurous works. The company became known for its cutting-edge stage direction, largely due to Rudel's willingness to poach renowned directors from the theatre who had not necessarily been involved with opera before. By the mid-1960s the company was generally regarded as one of the leading opera companies of the United States.

During his tenure at City Opera, Rudel displayed a stronger commitment to American opera than any other opera director in the history of opera in the United States, commissioning 12 works and leading 19 world premieres. With the help of the Ford Foundation
Ford Foundation
The Ford Foundation is a private foundation incorporated in Michigan and based in New York City created to fund programs that were chartered in 1936 by Edsel Ford and Henry Ford....

, the company did three full spring seasons entirely devoted to American opera. He also led a large number of United States premieres, including Alberto Ginastera
Alberto Ginastera
Alberto Evaristo Ginastera was an Argentine composer of classical music. He is considered one of the most important Latin American classical composers.- Biography :...

's Don Rodrigo
Don Rodrigo
Don Rodrigo is an opera in three acts by Alberto Ginastera, the composer's first opera, to an original Spanish libretto by Alejandro Casona. Ginastera composed the opera on commission from the Municipality of the City of Buenos Aires, Argentina. The first performance was at the Teatro Colón,...

 with tenor
Tenor
The tenor is a type of male singing voice and is the highest male voice within the modal register. The typical tenor voice lies between C3, the C one octave below middle C, to the A above middle C in choral music, and up to high C in solo work. The low extreme for tenors is roughly B2...

 Plácido Domingo
Plácido Domingo
Plácido Domingo KBE , born José Plácido Domingo Embil, is a Spanish tenor and conductor known for his versatile and strong voice, possessing a ringing and dramatic tone throughout its range...

 for the inauguration of the NYCO's new home at the New York State Theater at Lincoln Center (now called the David H. Koch Theater) on February 22, 1966. That same season the company presented the New York premiere of Poulenc
Francis Poulenc
Francis Jean Marcel Poulenc was a French composer and a member of the French group Les six. He composed solo piano music, chamber music, oratorio, choral music, opera, ballet music, and orchestral music...

’s Dialogues of the Carmelites
Dialogues of the Carmelites
Dialogues of the Carmelites , is an opera in three acts by Francis Poulenc. In 1953, M. Valcarenghi approached Poulenc to commission a ballet for La Scala in Milan; when Poulenc found the proposed subject uninspiring, Valcarenghi suggested instead a screenplay by Georges Bernanos, based on the...

.

Like his predecessors, Rudel had an eye for young American talent and was responsible for helping to cultivate a couple of generations of American singers. Among the singers whose careers he furthered were Samuel Ramey and Carol Vaness. One of his most apt decisions was in forming an artistic partnership with Beverly Sills
Beverly Sills
Beverly Sills was an American operatic soprano whose peak career was between the 1950s and 1970s. In her prime she was the only real rival to Joan Sutherland as the leading bel canto stylist...

, making her the NYCO's leading soprano
Soprano
A soprano is a voice type with a vocal range from approximately middle C to "high A" in choral music, or to "soprano C" or higher in operatic music. In four-part chorale style harmony, the soprano takes the highest part, which usually encompasses the melody...

 from 1956 until her retirement from the stage in 1979, although Joseph Rosenstock deserves the credit for hiring her in 1955 for her first performances with the company. With the NYCO Sills had her first major critical success in the first Handel
HANDEL
HANDEL was the code-name for the UK's National Attack Warning System in the Cold War. It consisted of a small console consisting of two microphones, lights and gauges. The reason behind this was to provide a back-up if anything failed....

 opera staged by the company, the role of Cleopatra in Giulio Cesare
Giulio Cesare
Giulio Cesare in Egitto , commonly known simply as Giulio Cesare, is an Italian opera in three acts written for the Royal Academy of Music by George Frideric Handel in 1724...

 opposite Norman Treigle
Norman Treigle
Norman Treigle was an American operatic bass-baritone, who was acclaimed for his great abilities as a singing-actor, and specialized in roles that evoked villainy and terror....

 in 1966. At that time Handel operas were rarely produced and the production drew a lot of attention from the international press. Sills was soon making appearances with all the major opera houses around the world. While Sills was busy with her international career, she remained a regular performer with the NYCO until her retirement. In 1970 John Simon White
John Simon White
John Simon White was an American opera director, vocal coach, and stage manager of Austrian birth. He was the managing director of the New York City Opera from 1970-1980.-References:...

 was appointed managing director of the NYCO in order to free up Rudel's schedule for the more artistic side of his job. White remained in that position until 1980.

Sills: 1979-1988

Upon Sills's retirement from the stage in 1979, she succeeded Rudel as General Director of the NYCO. Initially the plan was for Sills to share the post with Rudel and slowly phase him out. However, Rudel decided to resign in 1979 in order to take a position as music director of the Buffalo Philharmonic and Sills took the post over entirely.

At the time Sills assumed her position, the NYCO was in a bit of a slump, being burdened with a three million dollar debt and coming off a few seasons with less than favorable reviews. On the business side, Sills proved to be a godsend to the company, showing a prodigious gift for fund-raising. By the time she retired from her post in early 1989, she had grown the company's budget from $9 million to $26 million, and left the company in the black with a $3 million surplus. She was able to achieve this while still reducing ticket prices by 20 percent with the hope of attracting new and younger audiences.

As an artistic director Sills also proved to be astute, offering unusual repertory and making the company a haven for talented younger American artists. Under her, the repertory significantly diversified, with productions of rarities like Richard Wagner
Richard Wagner
Wilhelm Richard Wagner was a German composer, conductor, theatre director, philosopher, music theorist, poet, essayist and writer primarily known for his operas...

’s early opera Die Feen
Die Feen
Die Feen is an opera in three acts by Richard Wagner. The German libretto was written by the composer after Carlo Gozzi's La donna serpente.Die Feen was Wagner's first completed opera, but remained unperformed in his lifetime...

, Verdi’s Attila
Attila (opera)
Attila is an opera in a prologue and three acts by Giuseppe Verdi to an Italian libretto by Temistocle Solera, based on the play Attila, König der Hunnen by Friedrich Ludwig Zacharias Werner. Initially, Verdi had enlisted Francesco Maria Piave to prepare the libretto, after Verdi's own scenario...

 and Thomas’s Hamlet
Hamlet (opera)
Hamlet is an opéra in five acts by the French composer Ambroise Thomas, with a libretto by Michel Carré and Jules Barbier based on a French adaptation by Alexandre Dumas, père and Paul Meurice of Shakespeare's play Hamlet.- Ophelia mania in Paris:...

 as well as new operas like Anthony Davis
Anthony Davis (composer)
Anthony Davis, better known as Tony Davis , is an American composer, jazz pianist, and student of gamelan music.-Biography:...

’s X, The Life and Times of Malcolm X
X, The Life and Times of Malcolm X
X, The Life and Times of Malcolm X is an opera with music by Anthony Davis and libretto by Thulani Davis. Based on the life of the civil rights leader Malcolm X...

.

In 1982 a $5.3 million renovation of the New York State Theater occurred to improve the look and efficiency of the building. In 1983 the City Opera became the first American company to use supertitles
Surtitles
Surtitles, also known as supertitles, are translated or transcribed lyrics/dialogue projected above a stage or displayed on a screen, commonly used in opera or other musical performances. The word "surtitle" comes from the French language "sur", meaning "over" or "on", and the English language word...

. Sadly a 1985 warehouse fire destroyed 10,000 costumes for 74 of NYCO's productions.

Keene: 1989-1995

Sills retired as General Director in 1989 and was replaced by conductor Christopher Keene
Christopher Keene
Christopher Keene was an American conductor.Born in Berkeley, California, Keene studied at the University of California, Berkeley. Associated with the Spoleto Festival from 1968 , he was co-founder of the Spoleto Festival USA, where he was Music Director from 1977 to 1980...

, largely due to Sill's strong recommendation. Keene had previously worked as a conductor at the NYCO since 1970 and had served as the NYCO's Music Director from 1982 to 1986. He held the position until his untimely death from lymphoma
Lymphoma
Lymphoma is a cancer in the lymphatic cells of the immune system. Typically, lymphomas present as a solid tumor of lymphoid cells. Treatment might involve chemotherapy and in some cases radiotherapy and/or bone marrow transplantation, and can be curable depending on the histology, type, and stage...

 arising from AIDS
AIDS
Acquired immune deficiency syndrome or acquired immunodeficiency syndrome is a disease of the human immune system caused by the human immunodeficiency virus...

 at the age of forty-eight. His last performance, at the City Opera, was of Hindemith's Mathis der Maler in September 1995.

Mr. Keene's first season as head of the company was aborted by a musicians' strike, and later seasons were troubled by financial deficits, with the shortfall amounting in 1992 to $2.9 million of a $26 million budget. The company managed to get back into the black though in time for its 50th-anniversary in 1993. However, during the company's 50th season, Keene was admitted to the Betty Ford Center
Betty Ford Center
The Betty Ford Center , is a non-profit, separately licensed residential chemical dependency recovery hospital in Rancho Mirage, California, that offers inpatient, outpatient, and day treatment for alcohol and other drug addictions as well as prevention and education programs for family and children...

 to be treated for alcoholism
Alcoholism
Alcoholism is a broad term for problems with alcohol, and is generally used to mean compulsive and uncontrolled consumption of alcoholic beverages, usually to the detriment of the drinker's health, personal relationships, and social standing...

. He returned somewhat better but continued to seek treatment at an outpatient clinic in Manhattan where he finally overcame his drinking problem. The City Opera remained supportive of him through this period, renewing his contract to 1997. However, the NYCO board did name an executive director, Mark Weinstein, to take over some of Keene's administrative responsibilities, a decision which Keene objected to.

Yet for all his challenges, Keene consistently presented innovative opera seasons that were successful with critics during his tenure. His last season with the company alone included the United States premieres of Toshiro Mayuzumi
Toshiro Mayuzumi
Toshiro Mayuzumi was a Japanese composer.-Biography:...

's Kinkakuji [The Golden Pavilion] and Jost Meier's Dreyfus Affair. Just a month before his death Peter G. Davis wrote in New York
New York (magazine)
New York is a weekly magazine principally concerned with the life, culture, politics, and style of New York City. Founded by Milton Glaser and Clay Felker in 1968 as a competitor to The New Yorker, it was brasher and less polite than that magazine, and established itself as a cradle of New...

 that "Keene is one of the few authentic cultural heroes New York has left, thanks to his many recent acts of courage, personal as well as artistic."

Keene also instituted several restructurings within the City Opera's organization. In 1994, he removed the company's summer season creating a more conventional fall and spring format to the company's annual season, a change intended to attract the more serious operagoers needed to support the more serious repertory. James R. Oestreich in The New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...

 commented that, "Even in the standard repertory, Keene cleaned up many directorial excesses. He also reduced the number of productions, performances and cast changes each season and tightened up performance and rehearsal schedules to allow for better stage preparation and a greater ability to accommodate singer cancellations."

Kellogg: 1996-2007

Keene was succeeded in 1996 by Glimmerglass Opera
Glimmerglass Opera
Glimmerglass Festival is an opera company which was founded in 1975 by Peter Macris and presents an annual season of operas at the Alice Busch Opera Theater on Otsego Lake eight miles north of Cooperstown, New York, United States.The summer-only season usually consists of four operas performed in...

's general and artistic director, Paul Kellogg. Under his leadership, the NYCO added 62 new productions to its repertoire, including several world premieres by American composers, and inaugurated the series, Vox: Showcasing American Composers. He was also instrumental in establishing the NYCO as an important producer of operas by baroque masters such as Handel
George Frideric Handel
George Frideric Handel was a German-British Baroque composer, famous for his operas, oratorios, anthems and organ concertos. Handel was born in 1685, in a family indifferent to music...

, Gluck
Christoph Willibald Gluck
Christoph Willibald Ritter von Gluck was an opera composer of the early classical period. After many years at the Habsburg court at Vienna, Gluck brought about the practical reform of opera's dramaturgical practices that many intellectuals had been campaigning for over the years...

, and Rameau
Jean-Philippe Rameau
Jean-Philippe Rameau was one of the most important French composers and music theorists of the Baroque era. He replaced Jean-Baptiste Lully as the dominant composer of French opera and is also considered the leading French composer for the harpsichord of his time, alongside François...

, sparking a renewal of interest in these long-neglected works. A particular triumph was a highly lauded production of Handel's Orlando
Orlando (opera)
Orlando is an opera seria in three acts by George Frideric Handel written for the Royal Academy of Music . The Italian-language libretto was adapted from Carlo Sigismondo Capece's L'Orlando after Ludovico Ariosto's Orlando Furioso, which was also the source of Handel's operas Alcina and...

 in 2007 in a modern production by Chas Rader-Shieber that starred countertenor
Countertenor
A countertenor is a male singing voice whose vocal range is equivalent to that of a contralto, mezzo-soprano, or a soprano, usually through use of falsetto, or far more rarely than normal, modal voice. A pre-pubescent male who has this ability is called a treble...

 Bejun Mehta
Bejun Mehta
Bejun Mehta is an American countertenor who performs in operas, recitals, and concerts. He records for Harmonia Mundi.-Early life and family:...

 and the soprano Amy Burton. In keeping with NYCO's "people's opera" tradition, Kellogg inaugurated NYCO's "Opera for All" event, with reduced priced tickets, in 2005. Kellogg announced his retirement in 2007. Anthony Tomassini, in The New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...

, commented that Kellogg had "a record of innovation and achievement to be proud of. Few leaders of performing-arts institutions have been as effective at defining and carrying out a company mission". Tomassini called Kellogg's decision, at the urging of Mayor Rudy Giuliani
Rudy Giuliani
Rudolph William Louis "Rudy" Giuliani KBE is an American lawyer, businessman, and politician from New York. He served as Mayor of New York City from 1994 to 2001....

, to open its season on September 15, 2001, "the most meaningful day of music in 2001" and later used NYCO's opening day in 2001 and its 2009-2010 season as symbolic bookends for New York's music scene in the first decade of the 21st Century.

2008 to Present

A note of uncertainty about the company's future emerged in November 2008, when Gérard Mortier
Gérard Mortier
Gerard Alfons August, Baron Mortier is a Belgian opera director and administrator of Flemish origin.Mortier has served as general director of La Monnaie and of the Salzburg Festival...

, who was scheduled to begin his first official season as General and Artistic Director of the company in 2009, abruptly resigned. The company announced that "The economic climate in which we find ourselves today has caused us both to reconsider proceeding with our plans." Mortier had reportedly been promised a $60 million annual budget, which was cut to $36 million due to the economic climate. Michael Kaiser
Michael Kaiser
Michael M. Kaiser is president of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C.Dubbed "the turnaround king" for his work at such arts institutions as the Kansas City Ballet, Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, American Ballet Theatre and the Royal Opera House, Kaiser has...

 was appointed to advise the board on a turnaround strategy, including the recruitment of a new general director.

In January 2009, the company announced the appointment of George Steel
George Steel (musician)
George Steel is the General Manager and Artistic Director of the New York City Opera. At New York City Opera, he has overseen new productions of Don Giovanni, Leonard Bernstein's A Quiet Place, , and an evening of monodramas directed by Michael Counts...

 as general manager and artistic director, effective 1 February 2009. The David H. Koch Theater (previously known as the New York State Theater) underwent major renovations during the 2008-2009 season. During the construction the company did not stage opera in its home at Lincoln Center. Instead, New York City Opera presented a concert version of Samuel Barber
Samuel Barber
Samuel Osborne Barber II was an American composer of orchestral, opera, choral, and piano music. His Adagio for Strings is his most popular composition and widely considered a masterpiece of modern classical music...

's Antony and Cleopatra
Antony and Cleopatra (opera)
Antony and Cleopatra is an opera in three acts by American composer Samuel Barber. The libretto was prepared by Franco Zeffirelli based on the play Antony and Cleopatra by Shakespeare...

 at Carnegie Hall
Carnegie Hall
Carnegie Hall is a concert venue in Midtown Manhattan in New York City, United States, located at 881 Seventh Avenue, occupying the east stretch of Seventh Avenue between West 56th Street and West 57th Street, two blocks south of Central Park....

 in January 2009, as well as other concerts and programs around the city, and it continued to make classroom presentations in New York City's public schools. The company presented three concerts at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in 2009, I'm On My Way: Black History at City Opera, One Fine Day: A Tribute to Camilla Williams
Camilla Williams
Camilla Ella Williams is an American operatic soprano and the first African American to receive a contract with a major American opera company.-Biography:...

 and a 60th Anniversary concert production of William Grant Still
William Grant Still
William Grant Still was an African-American classical composer who wrote more than 150 compositions. He was the first African American to conduct a major American symphony orchestra, the first to have a symphony performed by a leading orchestra, the first to have an opera performed by a major...

's Troubled Island
Troubled Island
Troubled Island is an American opera in three acts composed by William Grant Still , with a libretto begun by poet Langston Hughes and completed by Verna Arvey...

. In June 2009 Bloomberg
Bloomberg L.P.
Bloomberg L.P. is an American privately held financial software, media, and data company. Bloomberg makes up one third of the $16 billion global financial data market with estimated revenue of $6.9 billion. Bloomberg L.P...

 reported that the company had incurred a $11 million deficit for the year ending June 2008. Revenue fell 23 percent to $32.9 million, expenses rose 11 percent to $44.2 million. In May 2011, the company announced that it would leave Lincoln Center to conserve costs and present its upcoming season in different venues throughout the city.

2009-2010 season

In November 2009, under its new general manager George Steel
George Steel (musician)
George Steel is the General Manager and Artistic Director of the New York City Opera. At New York City Opera, he has overseen new productions of Don Giovanni, Leonard Bernstein's A Quiet Place, , and an evening of monodramas directed by Michael Counts...

, the company returned with an opening night program called American Voices consisting of excerpts from American opera. The season also included a revival of Hugo Weisgall
Hugo Weisgall
Hugo David Weisgall was an American composer and conductor, known chiefly for his opera and vocal music compositions...

's Esther
Esther
Esther , born Hadassah, is the eponymous heroine of the Biblical Book of Esther.According to the Bible, she was a Jewish queen of the Persian king Ahasuerus...

 and a new production of Mozart's Don Giovanni
Don Giovanni
Don Giovanni is an opera in two acts with music by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and with an Italian libretto by Lorenzo Da Ponte. It was premiered by the Prague Italian opera at the Teatro di Praga on October 29, 1787...

 directed by Christopher Alden
Christopher Alden (director)
Christopher Alden is a radical theater director known for staging revisionist productions of opera. He is the twin brother of David Alden, also an opera director, and belongs to a generation of modernist directors that includes Robert Wilson and Peter Sellars, though Alden retains his own personal...

. The spring season opened in March 2010 and included Emmanuel Chabrier
Emmanuel Chabrier
Emmanuel Chabrier was a French Romantic composer and pianist. Although known primarily for two of his orchestral works, España and Joyeuse marche, he left an important corpus of operas , songs, and piano music as well...

's L'étoile directed by Mark Lamos
Mark Lamos
Mark Lamos is an American theatre and opera director, producer and actor. Under his direction, Hartford Stage won the 1989 Tony Award for Outstanding Regional Theatre and he has been nominated for two other Tonys...

 and Handel
HANDEL
HANDEL was the code-name for the UK's National Attack Warning System in the Cold War. It consisted of a small console consisting of two microphones, lights and gauges. The reason behind this was to provide a back-up if anything failed....

's Partenope
Partenope
Partenope is an opera by George Frideric Handel, first performed at the King's Theatre in London on 24 February 1730.-Background:...

 directed by Andrew Chown; original production directed by Francisco Negrin. The company also continued to collaborate with the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture and Opera Noire of New York
Opera Noire of New York
Opera Noire of New York is a performing arts company, as well as a resource and network for African-American artists. ONNY is an organization which has performed in multiple venues in the New York City metropolitan area. Opera Noire was founded by leading New York City Opera tenor Robert Mack,...

 to highlight the role of opera in African-American history including the programs Opera at the Schomburg, A Tribute to Robert McFerrin
Robert McFerrin
Robert McFerrin Sr. was the first African-American male to sing at the Metropolitan Opera in New York City...

, and X, The Life and Times of Malcolm X
X, The Life and Times of Malcolm X
X, The Life and Times of Malcolm X is an opera with music by Anthony Davis and libretto by Thulani Davis. Based on the life of the civil rights leader Malcolm X...

. In 2010 NYCO's VOX Contemporary Opera Lab featured new works of emerging and established composers at New York University
New York University
New York University is a private, nonsectarian research university based in New York City. NYU's main campus is situated in the Greenwich Village section of Manhattan...

 in late April.

2010-2011 season

New York City Opera's 2010-2011 season included a new production of Leonard Bernstein
Leonard Bernstein
Leonard Bernstein August 25, 1918 – October 14, 1990) was an American conductor, composer, author, music lecturer and pianist. He was among the first conductors born and educated in the United States of America to receive worldwide acclaim...

's A Quiet Place
A Quiet Place
A Quiet Place is an American opera in three acts, with music by Leonard Bernstein to a libretto by Stephen Wadsworth. The work is a sequel to Bernstein's 1951 short opera Trouble in Tahiti. In its initial form A Quiet Place was in one act; the premiere, on June 17, 1983, was a double bill: Trouble...

 directed by Christopher Alden
Christopher Alden (director)
Christopher Alden is a radical theater director known for staging revisionist productions of opera. He is the twin brother of David Alden, also an opera director, and belongs to a generation of modernist directors that includes Robert Wilson and Peter Sellars, though Alden retains his own personal...

; Richard Strauss
Richard Strauss
Richard Georg Strauss was a leading German composer of the late Romantic and early modern eras. He is known for his operas, which include Der Rosenkavalier and Salome; his Lieder, especially his Four Last Songs; and his tone poems and orchestral works, such as Death and Transfiguration, Till...

's Intermezzo
Intermezzo
In music, an intermezzo , in the most general sense, is a composition which fits between other musical or dramatic entities, such as acts of a play or movements of a larger musical work...

 directed by Leon Major
Leon Major
Leon Major is a Canadian opera and theatre director. He is the Artistic Director of The Maryland Opera Studio for the University of Maryland, College Park...

; and a new production titled Monodramas which consisted of three solo one-act works: John Zorn
John Zorn
John Zorn is an American avant-garde composer, arranger, record producer, saxophonist and multi-instrumentalist. Zorn is a prolific artist: he has hundreds of album credits as performer, composer, or producer...

's La Machine de l’être, Arnold Schoenberg
Arnold Schoenberg
Arnold Schoenberg was an Austrian composer, associated with the expressionist movement in German poetry and art, and leader of the Second Viennese School...

's Erwartung
Erwartung
Erwartung , Op.17 is a one-act opera by Arnold Schoenberg to a libretto by Marie Pappenheim. Composed in 1909, it was not premiered until June 6, 1924 in Prague conducted by Alexander Zemlinsky with Marie Gutheil-Schoder as the soprano. The work takes the unusual form of a monologue for solo...

, and Morton Feldman
Morton Feldman
Morton Feldman was an American composer, born in New York City.A major figure in 20th century music, Feldman was a pioneer of indeterminate music, a development associated with the experimental New York School of composers also including John Cage, Christian Wolff, and Earle Brown...

's Neither. The company also staged the American premiere of Séance on a Wet Afternoon
Séance on a Wet Afternoon (opera)
Séance on a Wet Afternoon is an opera in 2 acts by Stephen Schwartz to a libretto by the composer, based on the novel by Mark McShane and the screenplay by Bryan Forbes to the 1964 film of the same name...

, the first opera by Stephen Schwartz
Stephen Schwartz (composer)
Stephen Lawrence Schwartz is an American musical theatre lyricist and composer. In a career spanning over four decades, Schwartz has written such hit musicals as Godspell , Pippin and Wicked...

, the veteran composer of Broadway
Broadway theatre
Broadway theatre, commonly called simply Broadway, refers to theatrical performances presented in one of the 40 professional theatres with 500 or more seats located in the Theatre District centered along Broadway, and in Lincoln Center, in Manhattan in New York City...

 musicals.

In addition, the company presented several concert performances that included: An Evening With Christine Brewer
Christine Brewer
Christine Brewer is an American soprano. She grew up in the Mississippi River town of Grand Tower, Illinois. She attended McKendree University in Lebanon, Illinois and concentrated on music education. She was a music teacher for several years before embarking on a professional music performing...

; Lucky To Be Me: The Music of Leonard Bernstein
Leonard Bernstein
Leonard Bernstein August 25, 1918 – October 14, 1990) was an American conductor, composer, author, music lecturer and pianist. He was among the first conductors born and educated in the United States of America to receive worldwide acclaim...

; John Zorn
John Zorn
John Zorn is an American avant-garde composer, arranger, record producer, saxophonist and multi-instrumentalist. Zorn is a prolific artist: he has hundreds of album credits as performer, composer, or producer...

 & Friends (with Laurie Anderson
Laurie Anderson
Laura Phillips "Laurie" Anderson is an American experimental performance artist, composer and musician who plays violin and keyboards and sings in a variety of experimental music and art rock styles. Initially trained as a sculptor, Anderson did her first performance-art piece in the late 1960s...

, Lou Reed
Lou Reed
Lewis Allan "Lou" Reed is an American rock musician, songwriter, and photographer. He is best known as guitarist, vocalist, and principal songwriter of The Velvet Underground, and for his successful solo career, which has spanned several decades...

, Mike Patton
Mike Patton
Michael Allan "Mike" Patton is an American singer-songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, producer, and actor, best known as the lead singer of the metal/experimental rock band Faith No More. He has also sung for Mr...

, Marc Ribot
Marc Ribot
Marc Ribot born May 21, 1954) is an American guitarist and composer.His own work has touched on many styles, including no wave, free jazz, and Cuban music. Ribot is also known for collaborating with other musicians, most notably Tom Waits, Elvis Costello, and composer John Zorn.-Biography:Ribot was...

, Dave Douglas
Dave Douglas (trumpeter)
Dave Douglas is an American jazz trumpeter and composer whose music derives from many non-jazz musical styles, including classical music, folk music from European countries and Klezmer. He has been a member of the experimental big band Orange Then Blue...

 and Uri Caine
Uri Caine
Uri Caine is an American classical and jazz pianist and composer.-Early years:The son of Burton Caine, a professor at Temple Law School, Caine began playing piano at seven and studied with French jazz pianist Bernard Peiffer at 12. He later studied at the University of Pennsylvania where he came...

); a family opera concert of Oliver Knussen
Oliver Knussen
Oliver Knussen CBE is a British composer and conductor.-Biography:Oliver Knussen was born in Glasgow, Scotland. His father, Stuart Knussen, was principal double bass of the London Symphony Orchestra. Oliver Knussen studied composition with John Lambert, between 1963 and 1969 and also received...

's Where the Wild Things Are
Where The Wild Things Are
Where the Wild Things Are is a 1963 children's picture book by American writer and illustrator Maurice Sendak, originally published by Harper & Row. The book has been adapted into other media several times, including an animated short in 1973 , a 1980 opera, and, in 2009, a live-action feature film...

 with a libretto by Maurice Sendak
Maurice Sendak
Maurice Bernard Sendak is an American writer and illustrator of children's literature. He is best known for his book Where the Wild Things Are, published in 1963.-Early life:...

; and Defying Gravity: The Music of Stephen Schwartz with Kristin Chenoweth
Kristin Chenoweth
Kristin Chenoweth is an American singer and actress, with credits in musical theatre, film and television. She is best known on Broadway for her performance as Sally Brown in You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown , for which she won a Tony Award, and for originating the role of Glinda in the musical...

 and Raúl Esparza
Raúl Esparza
Raúl Eduardo Esparza is an American stage actor, singer, and voice artist noted for his award winning performances in Broadway shows...

.

Vox, Contemporary Opera Lab

Vox, Contemporary Opera Lab (formerly known as Vox: Showcasing American Composers) is an annual concert series dedicated to the development of contemporary American operas. Founded by New York City Opera in 1999, the festival offers composers and librettists the opportunity to hear excerpts of their works performed with professional singers and musicians. Up to twelve excerpts of previously un-produced operas are performed at each festival. Many of the operas that have been presented at Vox have gone on to be presented in full production by New York City Opera and various other opera companies, including Richard Danielpour
Richard Danielpour
Richard Danielpour is an American composer.-Biography:Danielpour is born of Persian/Jewish descent. He studied at Oberlin College and the New England Conservatory of Music, and later at the Juilliard School of Music, where he received a DMA in composition in 1986...

's Margaret Garner
Margaret Garner
Margaret Garner was an enslaved African American woman in pre-Civil War America who was notorious - or celebrated - for killing her own daughter rather than allow the child to be returned to slavery. She and her family had escaped in January 1856 across the frozen Ohio River to Cincinnati, but...

. Since 2006, the Vox performances have been presented at New York University
New York University
New York University is a private, nonsectarian research university based in New York City. NYU's main campus is situated in the Greenwich Village section of Manhattan...

's Skirball Center for the Performing Arts.

World premieres

  • William Grant Still
    William Grant Still
    William Grant Still was an African-American classical composer who wrote more than 150 compositions. He was the first African American to conduct a major American symphony orchestra, the first to have a symphony performed by a leading orchestra, the first to have an opera performed by a major...

     - Troubled Island
    Troubled Island
    Troubled Island is an American opera in three acts composed by William Grant Still , with a libretto begun by poet Langston Hughes and completed by Verna Arvey...

     (1949)
  • David Tamkin
    David Tamkin
    David Tamkin was an American composer of Jewish descent. He devoted much of his professional career as an arranger, composer [uncredited] and orchestrator of film scores for Hollywood movies. He worked on more than 50 films between 1939 and 1970.-Biography:Tamkin was born in Chernihiv, Ukraine...

     - The Dybbuk
    The Dybbuk (opera)
    The Dybbuk is an opera in three acts by composer David Tamkin. The work uses an English libretto by Alex Tamkin, the composer's brother, which is based on S. Ansky’s Yiddish play of the same name. Composed in 1933, the work was not premiered until October 4, 1951 when it was mounted by the New York...

     (1951)
  • Aaron Copland
    Aaron Copland
    Aaron Copland was an American composer, composition teacher, writer, and later in his career a conductor of his own and other American music. He was instrumental in forging a distinctly American style of composition, and is often referred to as "the Dean of American Composers"...

     - The Tender Land
    The Tender Land
    The Tender Land is an opera with music by Aaron Copland and libretto by Horace Everett, a pseudonym for Erik Johns. The opera tells of a farm family in the Midwest of the United States. Copland was inspired to write this opera after viewing the Depression-era photographs of Walker Evans and...

     (1954)
  • Nevit Kodallı
    Nevit Kodalli
    Nevit Kodallı is a Turkish composer of western-influenced classical music including operas and ballets. In 1948 he travelled to Paris where he studied with Arthur Honegger and Nadia Boulanger...

     - Van Gogh (1957)
  • Mark Bucci
    Mark Bucci
    Mark Bucci was an American composer, lyricist, and dramatist. Influenced by Giacomo Puccini, his work is composed in a contemporary yet lyrical style which frequently employs marked rhythms and memorable harmonies and melodies.-Career:Bucci studied music composition with Tibor Serly in New York...

     - Tale for a Deaf Ear
    Tale for a Deaf Ear
    Tale for a Deaf Ear is an opera in one act with music and lyrics by Mark Bucci, sung in three languages and based on a story by Elizabeth Enright that appeared in the April 1951 edition of Harper's Magazine. The work was commissioned by Samuel Wechsler for performance at the 1957 Tanglewood Music...

     (1958, first professional production)
  • Robert Kurka
    Robert Kurka
    Robert Frank Kurka was an American composer, who also taught and conducted his own works.Kurka was born in Cicero, Illinois. He was mostly self-taught, though he studied for short periods under Darius Milhaud and Otto Luening, receiving his M.A. degree from Columbia University in 1948...

     - The Good Soldier Schweik (1958)
  • Hugo Weisgall
    Hugo Weisgall
    Hugo David Weisgall was an American composer and conductor, known chiefly for his opera and vocal music compositions...

     - Six Characters in Search of an Author
    Six Characters in Search of an Author (opera)
    Six Characters in Search of an Author is an opera in three acts by composer Hugo Weisgall. The work uses an English libretto by Denis Johnston that is based on the play of the same name by Luigi Pirandello. The opera was commissioned by the New York City Opera under the leadership Julius Rudel...

     (1959)
  • Norman Dello Joio
    Norman Dello Joio
    - Life :He was born Nicodemo DeGioio in New York City to Italian immigrants. He began his musical career as organist and choir director at the Star of the Sea Church on City Island in New York at age 14. His father was an organist, pianist, and vocal coach and coached many opera stars from the...

     - The Triumph of St. Joan
    The Triumph of St. Joan
    The Triumph of St. Joan was originally an opera in three acts by Norman Dello Joio to an English language libretto on the subject of the martyrdom of Joan of Arc by Dello Joio and Joseph Machilis. It was premiered at Sarah Lawrence College on May 9, 1950. Although the opera was received positively,...

     (1959, the premiere of the third version)
  • Robert Ward - He Who Gets Slapped (1959)
  • Douglas Moore - The Wings of the Dove (1961)
  • Robert Ward - The Crucible
    The Crucible (opera)
    The Crucible is an English language opera written by Robert Ward based on the play The Crucible by Arthur Miller. It won both the 1962 Pulitzer Prize for Music and the New York Music Critics Circle Citation. The libretto was lightly adapted from Miller's text by Bernard Stambler.Ward received a...

     (1961)
  • Abraham Ellstein
    Abraham Ellstein
    Abraham "Abe" Ellstein was an American composer for Yiddish entertainments. Along with Shalom Secunda, Joseph Rumshinsky, and Alexander Olshanetsky, Ellstein was one of the "big four" composers of his era in New York City's Second Avenue Yiddish theatre scene...

     - The Golem (1962)

  • Carlisle Floyd
    Carlisle Floyd
    Carlisle Floyd is an American opera composer. The son of a Methodist minister, he based many of his works on themes from the South...

     - The Passion of Jonathan Wade (1962)
  • Jerome Moross
    Jerome Moross
    Jerome Moross was an American-born composer for the stage, and a composer, conductor and orchestrator for motion pictures.-Biography:...

     - Gentlemen, Be Seated! (1963)
  • Lee Hoiby
    Lee Hoiby
    Lee Henry Hoiby was an American composer and classical pianist. Best known as a composer of operas and songs, he was a disciple of composer Gian Carlo Menotti. Like Menotti, his works championed lyricism during a time when such compositions were deemed old fashioned and irrelevant to modern society...

     - Natalia Petrovna
    Natalia Petrovna
    Grand Duchess Natalia Petrovna of Russia was the third daughter of Peter the Great and his second wife Catherine I. Natalia was born on 20 March 1713 and died on 27 May 1715....

     (1964)
  • Jack Beeson
    Jack Beeson
    Jack Beeson was an American composer. He was known particularly for his operas, the best known of which are Lizzie Borden, Hello Out There! and The Sweet Bye and Bye.-Biography:...

     - Lizzie Borden
    Lizzie Borden (opera)
    Lizzie Borden is the best known opera by Jack Beeson. It is based on the real-life case of Lizzie Borden.It was written in 1965 and premiered on March 25, 1965 by the New York City Opera conducted by Anton Coppola. The English libretto is by Kenward Elmslie after a scenario by Richard Plant...

     (1965)
  • Ned Rorem
    Ned Rorem
    Ned Rorem is a Pulitzer prize-winning American composer and diarist. He is best known and most praised for his song settings.-Life:...

     - Miss Julie
    Miss Julie (opera)
    Miss Julie is an opera by Ned Rorem to an English libretto by Kenward Elmslie, based on the play, Miss Julie by Swedish playwright August Strindberg on the subject of the intersection of social class and illicit sexual relations in late 19th-century Sweden.-Performance history:The opera was...

     (1965)
  • Vittorio Giannini
    Vittorio Giannini
    Vittorio Giannini was a neoromantic American composer of operas, songs, symphonies, and band works.-Life and work:...

     - The Servant of Two Masters (1967)
  • Hugo Weisgall
    Hugo Weisgall
    Hugo David Weisgall was an American composer and conductor, known chiefly for his opera and vocal music compositions...

     - Nine Rivers from Jordan
    Nine Rivers from Jordan
    Nine Rivers from Jordan is an opera in a prologue and three acts by composer Hugo Weisgall. The work uses an English libretto by Denis Johnston and tells the story of a British soldier during World War II who lets a prisoner of war escape. The work premiered on October 9, 1968 at the New York City...

     (1968)
  • Gian Carlo Menotti
    Gian Carlo Menotti
    Gian Carlo Menotti was an Italian-American composer and librettist. Although he often referred to himself as an American composer, he kept his Italian citizenship. He wrote the classic Christmas opera, Amahl and the Night Visitors, among about two dozen other operas intended to appeal to popular...

     - The Most Important Man (1971)
  • Thea Musgrave
    Thea Musgrave
    Thea Musgrave CBE is a Scottish composer of opera and classical music.-Biography:Born in Barnton, Edinburgh, Thea Musgrave studied at the University of Edinburgh and in Paris as a pupil of Nadia Boulanger...

     - The Voice of Ariadne (1977)

  • Leon Kirchner
    Leon Kirchner
    Leon Kirchner was an American composer of contemporary classical music. He was a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and was awarded a Pulitzer Prize for his String Quartet No. 3.Kirchner was born in Brooklyn, New York...

     - Lilly (1977)
  • Dominick Argento
    Dominick Argento
    Dominick Argento is an American composer, best known as a leading composer of lyric opera and choral music...

     - Miss Havisham's Fire (1979)
  • Stanley Silverman - Madame Adare (1980)
  • Thomas Pasatieri
    Thomas Pasatieri
    Thomas Pasatieri is an American opera composer.He began composing at age 10 and, as a teenager, studied with Nadia Boulanger...

     - Before Breakfast (1980)
  • Jan Bach
    Jan Bach
    Jan Bach is an American composer. He taught at the University of Tampa from 1965 to 1966 and at Northern Illinois University in DeKalb, Illinois from 1966 to 2002. His primary performing instrument is the horn, and he is especially renowned for his horn pieces and especially well-known among...

     - The Student from Salamanca (1980)
  • Leonard Bernstein
    Leonard Bernstein
    Leonard Bernstein August 25, 1918 – October 14, 1990) was an American conductor, composer, author, music lecturer and pianist. He was among the first conductors born and educated in the United States of America to receive worldwide acclaim...

     - Candide (operetta)
    Candide (operetta)
    Candide is an operetta with music composed by Leonard Bernstein, based on the novella of the same name by Voltaire. The operetta was first performed in 1956 with a libretto by Lillian Hellman; but since 1974 it has been generally performed with a book by Hugh Wheeler which is more faithful to...

     (Opera House Version) (1982)
  • Anthony Davis
    Anthony Davis (composer)
    Anthony Davis, better known as Tony Davis , is an American composer, jazz pianist, and student of gamelan music.-Biography:...

     - X, The Life and Times of Malcolm X
    X, The Life and Times of Malcolm X
    X, The Life and Times of Malcolm X is an opera with music by Anthony Davis and libretto by Thulani Davis. Based on the life of the civil rights leader Malcolm X...

     (1986, first staged production)
  • Jay Riese - Rasputin (1988)
  • Hugo Weisgall
    Hugo Weisgall
    Hugo David Weisgall was an American composer and conductor, known chiefly for his opera and vocal music compositions...

     - Esther
    Esther (opera)
    Esther is an American opera in 3 acts composed by Hugo Weisgall, with a libretto by Charles Kondek. Esther was premiered by the New York City Opera in October 1993...

     (1993)
  • Ezra Laderman
    Ezra Laderman
    Ezra Laderman is an American composer of classical music.-Biography:His parents, Isidor and Leah, both emigrated to the United States from Poland. Though poor, the family had a piano. Ezra writes, "At four, I was improvising at the piano; at seven, I began to compose music, writing it down...

     - Marilyn (1993)
  • Lukas Foss
    Lukas Foss
    Lukas Foss was a German-born American composer, conductor, and pianist.-Music career:He was born Lukas Fuchs in Berlin, Germany in 1922. His father was the philosopher and scholar Martin Fuchs...

     - Griffelkin
    Griffelkin
    Griffelkin is an opera by Lukas Foss with a libretto by Alastair Reid. The opera was first performed on November 6, 1955, in a nationwide telecast by the NBC Opera Theatre.-Background:...

     (1993, premiere of revised version)
  • Deborah Drattell
    Deborah Drattell
    Deborah Drattell is an American composer. She was born in Brooklyn, New York, and started her career in music as a violinist. Her compositions have been performed by the New York Philharmonic, Orchestra of St. Luke's, the Tanglewood and Caramoor Music Festivals, and many other groups and venues...

     - Lilith
    Lilith (opera)
    Lilith is an English-language opera created by American composer Deborah Drattell, with a libretto by David Steven Cohen. The opera reimagines Eve returning to Eden following the funeral of Adam...

     (2001, first staged production)
  • Charles Wuorinen
    Charles Wuorinen
    Charles Peter Wuorinen is a prolific Pulitzer Prize-winning American composer born and living in New York City. His catalog of more than 250 compositions includes works for orchestra, opera, chamber music, as well as solo instrumental and vocal works...

     - Haroun and the Sea of Stories (2004)

External links

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