Is it possible the phoenix is about to rise again?
For decades, New York City Opera was always the other, upstart opera company at Lincoln Center. From 1966 to 2010, it made its home at New York State Theater, across the plaza from the more venerated Metropolitan Opera.
While NYCO could not compete with the larger budgets and star-power of the Met, it was not unusual for it to excel its establishment neighbor – which could often be encumbered by its larger space and more ponderous productions – through creative artistic solutions and investment in unusual and neglected repertoire. Furthermore, NYCO provided a launchpad for many singers who went on to international careers and graduated to the Met itself, among them Placido Domingo, Samuel Ramey, José Carreras, Carol Vaness, and of course Beverly Sills. Sills served as NYCO’s director from 1979 to 1989.
Approximately one-third of NYCO’s repertoire was devoted to American opera. Among works to have received their first performances by the company include Aaron Copland’s “The Tender Land,” Robert Kurka’s “The Good Soldier Schweik,” Robert Ward’s “The Crucible” (recipient of a Pulitzer Prize in 1962), Jack Beeson’s “Lizzie Borden,” and Ned Rorem’s “Miss Julie.”
The company also presented a number classic musicals and served as a springboard into the opera house for Leonard Bernstein’s “Candide.”
Despite its decades of artistic success, in 2008, it was revealed the organization was struggling against serious financial difficulties. After 45 years, it would depart Lincoln Center to perform in a variety of New York venues, including the Brooklyn Academy of Music, until its seemingly inevitable bankruptcy in 2013. (Ironically, it was in 2008 that billionaire David H. Koch donated $100 million for the renovation of New York State Theater. The space has since borne his name.)
In 2016, the company was revived under new management, NYCO Renaissance Ltd. The new NYCO returned to Lincoln Center with a performance of “Tosca,” not at Koch Theater, but at Jazz at Lincoln Center. Since then, it has maintained something of an itinerant existence, in recent years maintaining its presence mainly through recitals and park performances. It has not given a staged performance since the world premiere of Ricky Ian Gordon’s “The Garden of the Finzi-Continis” in 2022.
Now the company seems poised to begin a new era. Conductor Constantine Orbelian, who had been the organization’s music director since 2021, was promoted to its executive director in September. The first concert under his administration will not be a staged opera, but rather an ambitious program to be presented at Carnegie Hall under the title “Music of Survival: A Celebration of Survival and Perseverance Told Through the Universal Language of Music.” The evening will include Mieczyslaw Weinberg’s Suite from “The Last Inch” and Fantasy for Cello and Orchestra, Erich Wolfgang Korngold’s rarely-heard Cello Concerto, conceived for the Bette Davis film “Deception,” and the U.S. premiere of Gennady Rovner’s “Metamorphosis” Symphony. The concert will take place on February 24 at 8 p.m.
This will serve as preamble to next season, which will highlight a fully-staged revival of William Grant Still’s opera “Trouble Island.” The work, with a libretto by Langston Hughes and Still’s wife, Verna Arvey, focuses on the rise and fall of Jean-Jacques Dessalines, leader of the Haitian Revolution, the only slave rebellion in history to successfully establish an independent nation.
“Troubled Island,” the first work by a Black American to be performed by a major company, in 1949 (after having been withdrawn twice in 1945 and 1948), was a great success with the opening night audience, receiving 22 curtain calls. Critical reaction was not as kind. Years later, Still’s daughter Judith claimed the work’s positive reception had been undermined by institutional racism. “Howard Taubman came to my father and said ‘Billy, because I’m your friend I think that I should tell you this – the critics have had a meeting to decide what to do about your opera. They think the colored boy has gone far enough and they have voted to pan your opera.’ And that was it. In those days, critics had that kind of influence.”
Still had already achieved unprecedented recognition in his field for a composer of color, having also been the first Black American to have had a symphony performed by a major orchestra, the first to have had a symphony performed widely, the first to have conducted a major orchestra, and much later – three years after his death, in fact – the first to have an opera (“A Bayou Legend”) broadcast on national television, as late as 1981. During his heyday, Still was widely hailed as the “Dean of Afro-American Composers.” But for some reason, a Black man in the opera house was evidently perceived by influential forces as an audacious step too far.
In 2006, Judith Still organized the heartbreaking story into a 600-page book she compiled from original documents, “Just Tell the Story: Troubled Island.” I ordered it in 2021, from William Grant Still Music, which is owned and operated by the composer’s family, but have yet to read it. I will do so before attending next season’s performance. Hopefully the planned revival will not be hampered or dismissed because of anti-DEI initiatives. While I agree that music and composers should rise or fall according to their individual merit, they should also be given the same opportunities as their peers. From what has been allowed to reach the public, Still has long proven himself an important voice in American music. Sadly, it’s only in the wake of George Floyd that many of our musical institutions are finally giving Still the platform he has so long deserved. I think he would be shocked to know his music is now being played by most of the country’s great orchestras.
NYCO was founded in 1943, offering affordable opera out of New York City Center, on West 55th Street, formerly a Masonic temple, converted into a performing arts center by New York Mayor Fiorello La Guardia and City Council President Newbold Morris. La Guardia dubbed it “the people’s opera.” As previously indicated, the company moved to Lincoln Center in 1966, the same year the Met opened at its new digs. (Since 1883, the Old Met had been located at 1411 Broadway.)
Unfortunately, I missed the glory days of Sills and her associates, but in the 1990s, I would travel in to New York with my best friend to catch NYCO performances of rarely-staged operas by Korngold, Sir Michael Tippett, Ferruccio Busoni, and Paul Hindemith. This would have been during Christopher Keene’s tenure. Keene had conducted at NYCO since 1970, and I am greatly indebted to him for some highly enjoyable and musically stimulating afternoons at the theater. Later, I learned of Keene’s personal demons, which made his energy and professionalism all the more remarkable. Sadly, he died of complications from AIDS in 1995 at the age of 48.
Buoyed by the excellence of these productions, I brought my parents, who were not “opera people,” but were curious, to see Arrigo Boito’s “Mefistofele.” Tito Copabianco’s classic production had propelled both Norman Treigle and Samuel Ramey to superstardom, but regrettably by 1994, it was looking a little threadbare and sad. At least it had an orgy and some horses (though not in the same scene).
Orbelian says he also plans to resurrect Pietro Mascagni’s “Isabeau.” You can read more about it here:
https://apnews.com/article/new-york-city-opera-constantine-orbelian-c4b9260c0ca4d5dbb8caf326de81a430
Music of Survival at Carnegie Hall on February 24
PHOTOS: William Grant Still and baritone Robert Weede, behind the scenes of “Troubled Island;” and New York City Opera’s Constantine Orbelian
