As Fred Cohen reported in Opera News back in February, the company was on shaky economic footing prior to Beverly Sills’ tenure as General Director and lead fundraiser in the 70s and 80s, then again, after. Financial woes were not a recent phenomenon at NYCO. Part of this, obviously, if grossly, comes down to money. Both campaigns failed, and, at the time of publishing, the company has filed for bankruptcy, and is in the process of liquidating what little is left of the once-great house. The closer the deadline approached, the further success seemed to recede into the horizon. ![]() This move drew ridicule from some circles and was lampooned by a withering daily countdown on James Jorden’s queer opera zine. ![]() Kickstarter is a crowdsourcing platform generally used by individual artists and smaller companies with none of the institutional history or heft that organizations like City Opera have. Of the seven, one million was allocated to a Kickstarter campaign. Their last-minute do-or-die campaign to raise $7 million by the end of September was failing. When I began preparing to write this article, the fate of NYCO was hanging in the balance. Everyone is asking: How could this have happened? What could have been done to prevent it? Why doesn’t New York City have the second opera house that it, according to some estimations, deserves? ![]() Well, everybody who actually has an interest in opera in the first place, and in City Opera, at, it seems, a distant second.ĭespite the fairly well documented “missteps” the company has taken on its way from being the second major opera outfit in New York City to nonexistence, there persists-in virtually all of the reportage and absolutely all of the conversations I have had with friends and colleagues-a subtext of disbelief. We chatted for a bit about my skills (it turns out I will need to foreground my administrative rather than managerial experience in order to be a better candidate for the kinds of positions that this particular agency receives: assistants) before turning inevitably to the melodrama that has been the spectacular fall of the New York City Opera. One of the recruiters used to be an opera singer. ![]() I just left an interview with a temp agency. Tweet Beverly Sills as Cleopatra in “Giulio Cesare” at New York City Opera, 1967.
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