Attempting To Step Out From MET Opera's Avant-garde Shadows, New York City Opera Hires Avant-garde Administrator And Scouts New Stages

"Gerard Mortier, one of the opera world’s pre-eminent modernizers, who made his mark over a quarter century with sometimes shocking, up-to-the-minute productions, will become general manager and artistic director of the New York City Opera in 2009.

Mr. Mortier, now the director of the much larger and more complex Paris National Opera, will succeed Paul Kellogg, who leaves in May as general and artistic director.

The appointment of such a major international figure is a coup for the No. 2 house in Lincoln Center. It represents a challenge to the behemoth across the plaza, the Metropolitan Opera, where a new general manager, Peter Gelb, has shaken up its hidebound ways.

In a telephone interview from Paris today, Mr. Mortier said he would halt the company’s intense and protracted effort to find a new home, which included failed attempts to move to Ground Zero and to a nearby site on Amsterdam Avenue. Instead, the company will stay put in the New York State Theater, whose stage was built for ballet, but will travel for performances elsewhere in the city. He said he had recently visited the Apollo Theater, the Hammerstein Ballroom and the Armory." ...

Daniel J. Wakin "New General Manager at New York City Opera" New York Times February 27, 2007

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/28/
arts/music/27cnd-opera.html?hp

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Also see Paul Griffeths "Messiaen's Excursion Into Rapturous Opera" New York Times October 17, 1999

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/
fullpage.html?res=9A00E5D91430F934A25753C1A96F958260





























Gerald Mortier production of Offenbach's Gerolstein.

Will there be room for outstanding new American opera at a reborn, post-modern New York City Opera?

Photo credit: Copyright © Dr. Dieter David Scholz 2002 www.dieter-david-scholz.de With thanks.