New York City Opera’s mission is to inspire audiences with innovative and theatrically compelling opera of the highest quality, to nurture the work of American artists and young singers, and to build new audiences through affordable ticket prices and extensive outreach and education programs.
Below are the voices and stories of those that support this mission:
"I first moved to NYC 20 years ago as a graduate student at Columbia University. As a full time doctoral student I had little money for food let alone the arts. I would literally save subway tokens (yes, tokens back then) and WALK to Lincoln Center for standing room tickets for City Opera. "
-- Carla Shere, Volunteer for over 10 years
"It is the one opera company in the world with which I have performed the most over my career (eight times in total), and additionally, City Opera gave me my NY operatic stage debut with the role of Arsace in their acclaimed production of Handel's Partenope. Even before I made my professional debut with City Opera, I was excited to be a part of what City Opera was doing for the arts in our country. I had friends in many of their productions, I would go to the performances as a "normal" audience attendee and I knew of City Opera's fantastic reputation for not only performing the standards of the operatic repertoire, but also their reputation to program unusual and interesting music."
-- David Walker, Countertenor
"I am certain that you are aware of how much NYCO means to millions of people who have been in the audience for some of the most extraordinary performances of the opera world, and we are certain that your future will hold only success."
-- Jane Treherne-Thomas, Fan
-- Jane Treherne-Thomas, Fan
"I have so many special memories of City Opera. Like so many of my colleagues, I sang with City Opera regularly in my early career. It is the company where I learned to sing Handel, Mozart, Verdi, and Puccini, and was, in fact, the company that launched my international career. City Opera has given thousands of singers, just like me, vital first and second chances at a role, and continues to be our country's preeminent place for young singers to launch their careers."
-- Carol Vaness, Soprano
"I want to see the 65-year tradition of great programs of City Opera continue for the next 65 years!"
-- Jean Strickholm, Fan
-- Jean Strickholm, Fan
"If the only arts organizations that survive in this country during this economic crisis are the ones with the largest budgets, we will be sending a message to ourselves that says, 'Art is only available if we can afford it. Otherwise, it will disappear.' But art should be a vital and necessary component of our society and culture. Something that can lift us out of the depths and bring us together. I happened to be performing in an opera at City Opera that had performances in the days immediately following September 11th 2001. We didn't want to go to the theater, we felt that what we were doing was frivolous in comparison to the crisis happening in our City. Except when we arrived at the theater and began performing, and felt the release of laughter and tears among the audience members, we realized that we were artists, in service to our audience, and that art can heal and connect people in a way almost nothing else can. And it's not about money, or budgets, or donors, but about bringing people together."
-- Jennifer Rivera, Mezzo-Soprano
"I joined the New York City Opera Orchestra in the early 1980's at an exciting time when Beverly Sills was ending her performing career to become General Director of the company. Recently graduated from The Curtis Institute of Music, I had one year's experience in a symphony orchestra prior to my successful audition with the NYCO, but very little experience with Opera. I had played in student productions of Mozart and a few "La Boheme" performances in Philadelphia, but I had never actually attended a single Opera performance in my life except a "Carmen" by an amateur group long since defunct. (I didn't like the singing but the story and the music were great!) However, Beverly's recorded voice had always dazzled me. So I was interested when the first rehearsals I participated in were for Gian-Carlo Menotti's "Juana La Loca" written expressly for Beverly. The opera is about a Spanish queen who is betrayed and abandoned by every powerful figure in her life, including her own son. At the end of the opera Juana faces her death in prison in utter desolation.. Beverly sang at the rehearsals and once greeted my curious stare from the Viola Section with a dazzling smile. I was quite shy and didn't dare approach her. But I was enraptured by her musicianship which turned every phrase into something meaningful. I remember thinking, maybe opera won't be so bad. Finally we opened the opera in the hall which Beverly had helped make so famous, The State Theater. What surprised me was the wrenching emotion I began to feel through Beverly's portrayal not only because of musical values. At the opening night I was so overwhelmed that, when the performance ended, I packed my instrument and stayed seated until after Beverly's final curtain call. I must have looked like a schlep, hunched over like a sad soul on the #1 subway. Each deeply moving performance ended and each time I couldn't leave the pit. Then it happened, after the last performance in New York. Beverly came out for one of her solo bows holding a single rose from one of the bouquets tossed at her. She looked squarely at me and tossed the rose to me. I caught it with an astonished skill I never knew I had. To say I was thunderstruck is an understatement. Decades later I still recollect that rose, her acknowledgement and her humanity. She had managed to touch me and she knew it. From that moment, when a great lady showed me how humanly connected we were, I was a captive of Opera forever. Beverly was the consummate operatic artist because she could--and did--treat every person at her audiences as an intimate friend and collaborator. She owned us, and Opera owned her. The example she laid down for me personally about the meaning of a performance has inspired me ever since. And when I walk into the Plaza after a performance of, say, "The Marriage of Figaro," I feel my partnership with the whole world that Beverly and the New York City Opera taught me. I look forward to New York City Opera's performances long after the time I will have left the orchestra and to the extraordinary connections between people it will always create."
--Donald Dal Maso, Orchestra
"As a young dramatically-minded composer, I have to say that City Opera has always given me hope that all my hard work isn't for nothing.
I remember being an undergrad at NYU and seeing their VOX Festival of works in progress, curated by Mark Adamo, the amazing composer-librettist who would eventually become my teacher. I can't overstate how powerful it is for a young composer to see operas that are brand new, unfinished, imperfect. Operas that are not already lionized as being the zenith of human achievement in the field, and oh yeah, don't bother trying because you can't possibly top this.
It never really occurred to me before then that anyone could write an opera; it seemed more like something old(er) composers did at the peaks of their careers, and why even bother thinking about it at 20? But then the 20-something composer of this new piece bounded on stage after his performance, and he looked sort of like me. And his music sounded sort of like mine. The gauntlet had been thrown."
-- Jeremy Howard Beck, Composer
I remember being an undergrad at NYU and seeing their VOX Festival of works in progress, curated by Mark Adamo, the amazing composer-librettist who would eventually become my teacher. I can't overstate how powerful it is for a young composer to see operas that are brand new, unfinished, imperfect. Operas that are not already lionized as being the zenith of human achievement in the field, and oh yeah, don't bother trying because you can't possibly top this.
It never really occurred to me before then that anyone could write an opera; it seemed more like something old(er) composers did at the peaks of their careers, and why even bother thinking about it at 20? But then the 20-something composer of this new piece bounded on stage after his performance, and he looked sort of like me. And his music sounded sort of like mine. The gauntlet had been thrown."
-- Jeremy Howard Beck, Composer
