New York City Opera

The New York City Opera (NYCO) is an American opera company located in Manhattan in New York City. The company has been active from 1943 through 2013 (when it filed for 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 difficulties and moved its offices to 75 Broad Street in Lower Manhattan. In the 2011−12 and 2012−13 seasons, NYCO performed four operas at various 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 (e.g., Douglas Moore's The Ballad of Baby Doe, Carlisle Floyd's Susannah, and Leonard Bernstein's Candide) to new works (e.g., Thomas Pasatieri's Before Breakfast and Mark Adamo's Little Women). 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.

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