NYC Arts: The Complete Guide to Art and Culture

New York City Opera gave its first performance at City Center on February 21, 1944. This was a relatively low-cost performance of Tosca, featuring the American singer Dusolina Diannini. Ever since, the company has sought not only to make opera affordable, but also to pursue innovative choices in repertory and to provide a home for American singers and composers. Populist mayor Fiorello LaGuardia, a founder, for these reasons dubbed it “the people’s opera company.” To this day its reasonable ticket prices make it a viable option for the widest possible audience.

Over half of the works that City Opera has presented since its founding were written in the 20th century, including works by Bela Bartok, Benjamin Britten, Aaron Copland, Philip Glass, Hans Werner Henze and Kurt Weill. The company has continually sought to reintroduce neglected works to audiences hungry for non-standard repertory alternatives. Some of these, like Boito’s Mefistofele, Janacek’s From the House of the Dead, and Delibes’ Lakmé, have become City Opera staples. The company was also the first in New York to rediscover and stage Verdi’s Macbeth, Donizetti’s Anna Bolena and Roberto Devereux, Handel’s Julius Caesar and Monteverdi’s Orfeo.

In recent seasons, City Opera has enjoyed successful productions of Tobias Picker’s Emmeline, Carlisle Floyd’s Of Mice and Men, Jack Beeson’s Lizzie Borden and Virgil Thomson’s The Mother of Us All.

On February 22, 1966, with a production of Ginastera’s Don Rodrigo featuring Placido Domingo, the company gave its inaugural performance at New York State Theater at Lincoln Center (now the David H. Koch Theater). Due to financial difficulties, the spring of 2011 marked the company's final performances in the Koch Theater.

In 2009 City Opera named George Steel as manager and artistic director. City Opera has launched the careers of Samuel Ramey, Sherrill Milnes, Carol Vaness and Beverly Sills, to name but a few, and it remains home to some of America’s top singers, including Lauren Flanigan, David Daniels, Amy Burton and Mark Delavan. In 1983, City Opera pioneered in the use of supertitles, opening up the art form to countless millions who might otherwise be averse to the idea of foreign-language librettos. The Metropolitan Opera followed suit shortly thereafter with a different titling system. The last half-decade has also seen the development of an education and outreach program that reaches 12,000 students in 75 schools every year.

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