New York City Opera Closes

College Majors Music Major
1

<p>It is a sad day. This is where DD saw her first NY operas since the MET was out of reach for us.</p>

<p>"It is with much regret that we announce the end of our fundraising campaign on Kickstarter and the cancellation of the 2013-2014 Season. New York City Opera did not achieve the goal of its emergency appeal, and the board and management will begin the necessary financial and operational steps to wind down the Company including initiating the Chapter 11 process. </p>

<p>For seventy years, since Mayor Fiorello La Guardia established it as “The People’s Opera,” New York City Opera has introduced generation after generation of young singers who are stars in the making, brought the public exciting new works and compelling, fresh interpretations of classics, acted as a champion for American composers and performers, and ensured that every New Yorker can experience the live art of opera. We thank you for your continued support over the years and for making New York City Opera truly “The People’s Opera.”"</p>

2

<p>What a day this is. :(</p>

3

<p>Why D is in Europe. The town she lives in only has 500,000 people, yet they support an opera house that stages over 30 productions a year. In the US, with over 7000 VP students currently enrolled in college, it seems that everyone wants to study opera, but no one wants to go to opera. Too sad.</p>

4

<p>Sad state of affairs, when I was in college I saw some great performances at the NYC Opera, it was more approachable and affordable to a poor college student than the Met was. I think their decision to leave the State Theater hurt them, but in the end I think it was because they simply couldn’t find anyone who thought Opera for everyone was a great idea any more. </p>

<p>This is true of all arts, the same is going on with orchestras as well, the audiences are getting quite long in the tooth, and the corporate sponsors who used to see supporting these organizations as part of their mission, no longer really do, and I suspect in the not too near future there will be some sort of lament at what once was. We have become a society in this country obsessed with the vision of finance types and accountants, where if it doesn’t have a monetary ROI of some sort, it isn’t worth anything, and that is sad. They wonder why kids come out of college and turn into the kind of people who don’t care about anyone, are tuned out, and only care about money, create financial chicanery and think nothing of it, and we all sit back and say why. The lack of arts in people’s lives is not the only cause, of course, but one of the things about appreciating art, seeing it or hearing it performed, is you realize that there are things that on paper aren’t worth much, that are priceless.</p>

5

<p>This breaks my heart.</p>

6

<p>Yes, this is heartbreaking. Musicprnt, what you say rings so true. Is there a solution?</p>

7

<p>@sopranomom-</p>

<p>I wish I had solutions, but the problems are deeply ingrained in what has happened to society. I would say we have come into an era of 19th century robber barons, but the difference is people like Carnegie, Rockefeller and Fisk and Gould, as bad as they could be, appreciated the idea of arts as a benefit to society and supported it (the Pittsburgh Symphony Hall was built by Carnegie, and the Pittsburgh Symphony still gets support from the Carnegie foundations). The well off of today to me only seem to care about themselves and don’t see investing in arts as giving them any benefit. </p>

<p>The middle class is so stressed out trying to hold on to what they have and hoping their kids have what they did that they aren’t exactly going to stress over music programs in the schools being cut, or arts programs, and unfortunately it also means they are going to dissuade their kids from going anywhere near the arts, because to them it has no future which is sad. </p>

<p>Then, too, sadly, there is a whole cult of ignorance out there, found in many quarters including the tea party, that if arts were important ‘the market’ would value them, or that arts are ‘elitist’ and so forth, or sadly, ‘not worth it’. There was a debate on the floor of the house about a spending bill, and a congressman from somewhere down south wanted an amendment to a spending bill that would provide pork that would help rebuild infrascture around one of the major NASCAR tracks, yet the same congressman time and again has derided the NEA and the NEH as “worthless” and “elitist”. </p>

<p>There is always room for optimism, when I was in LA earlier this year with my S for an audition we went to the LA Phil, and I saw an audience that shocked me, that had a lot of young people, including those having a date to the Phil, and that gave me hope. There are people out there fighting for the arts, but sadly it is a major battle, budget crunches come, and arts programs are thrown out the window, there were severe cutbacks in spending in my high school district that hit the music programs hard, yet they also tried to float a 19 million dollar bond issue to rebuild the football stadiums at both high schools with all kinds of state of the art stuff (thank heaven for the older voters in my district, who noticed and voted it down), they just floated a 10 million dollar issue I haven’t had the time to check. I am not against sports, but I saw commentary on a local town blog and the supporters of the sports stadium bond were claiming how sports helps kids, how valuable it is, yet sports is probably as elite as it gets (put it this way, you play an instrument, you get into the music program, you aren’t hyper athletic, you don’t make sthe sports teams), but these same people (and I have heard the type I am talking about in person as well as online) will tell you arts programs are ‘fluff’, ‘elitist’, you name it, it is pathetic:(. </p>

<p>Want to know the real answer? It is going to take advocacy, talking to other people and letting them know how important it is, it takes telling people why they should care, what it does, that maybe someone who has been exposed to music or visual art or dance won’t be so obsessed with status or with becoming an investment banker and making a killing, or seeing everything in dollars and cents. Encourage people to send their kids to kindermusic classes, encourage them to have their kids try an instrument, encourage them to take kids to orchestra performance, or an opera broadcast, or an art museum. Schools once did some of this, I went to Philharmonic concerts in High School for 5 bucks (saw Bernstein conduct an all Copeland program, with Copeland in the audience, it was his 80th birthday, and I was literally in the front row), but it is up to all of us. I get it when I field questions about why I would pay the tuition I am to have my son pursue his love of music, and I explain why. Most people aren’t the narrow minded type I decry above, they simply don’t know or understand, to be honest most think it is cool I am supporting his dream, I think a lot of it is people need exposure to it from people who know.</p>

8

<p>I posted this on my Facebook this morning:</p>

<p>While I’m sad to hear of the closing of New York City Opera, I’m not surprised. In its last years, the company decided to face its financial crisis by punishing the musicians - wages for the chorus and orchestra were cut 80% and instead of a weekly salary, the orchestra was paid by the rehearsal and performance. Of course it would close. How can you have a classical music organization without musicians?? An opera company that does not support the interests of ALL musicians does not deserve the title of “The People’s Opera” and it doesn’t deserve sympathy. I will weep for what it once represented, not what it became.</p>

<p>Thoughts?</p>

9

<p>From what I understand only one company in the US, the Met, signs singers to full year contracts. . Even high profile YAPS, that used to pay close to living wage are now offering young singers paltry “subsidies” that are as little as two hundred dollars a week. And these young singers are WORKED. It stinks. Denying the realities of the marketplace is pointless. Do not rely on the old way of doing things in opera. Those days are over. This is why I will not shut up about the importance of not incurring debt in the pursuit of a vocal performance degree.</p>

10

<p>City Opera had at one point a contract system in place, but eliminated it in 2011.</p>

<p><a href=“http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/12/arts/music/city-opera-unions-denounce-contract-offer.html[/url]”>http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/12/arts/music/city-opera-unions-denounce-contract-offer.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>My point was that they made a deliberate decision as the #2 opera company in New York to not make music a priority and I can’t imagine this benefitted them. I wonder how much the administration took in pay cuts.</p>

11

<p>They can’t make music a priority if they do not have the money. Do I think that many opera companies are grossly mismanaged…yes of course. Management is clueless about the current market for opera as they are clueless as to how quickly funds can dry up in a down economy.</p>

<p>“I wonder how much the administration took in pay cuts.”
I have no idea. But they are out of a job now.</p>