By Matt Chaban 2/14/12 5:37pm

Starchitects

newyork+opera

When the Fat Lady Sang: Christian de Portzamparc Nearly Built a Wild Opera Tower

While working on yesterday’s story about Christian de Portzamparc’s decade-long struggle to get his tower at 400 Park Avenue South built, we stumbled upon another striking New York project by  the Pritzker Prize-winning Frenchman that never was. For two years starting in 2004, Mr. de Portzamparc labored on a new home for the New York City Opera, to be built on a site that belonged to the American Red Cross, before the dream was shattered like the climax of an opera. Read More

By Zachary Woolfe 6/14/11 7:48pm

Opera

TK

Why City Opera May Bite the Dust, and What That Means for New York

Looking back, it should have been clear in October how New York City Opera’s year was going to end.

The company opened its season then with the New York premiere of A Quiet Place, the strange, flawed, fascinating final opera by Leonard Bernstein, one of the city’s favorite sons. The opera is close to the Read More

By Zachary Woolfe 9/21/10 10:19pm

Meet the New Chairman of City Opera

With New York City Opera’s season opening only a few weeks away, the company has taken on new leadership after years of troubled finances and a muddled sense of its mission. Charles R. Wall, who served on City Opera’s board from 2001 to 2008, was elected chairman of the company’s board on Thursday.

“The board Read More

By Zachary Woolfe 4/07/10 11:58am

Going for Baroque

Every time a Handel opera gets put on, it seems, people talk about a Baroque revival. Forget that it’s been almost 50 years since a landmark New York City Opera production of Giulio Cesare sparked American interest in the period. Or that it’s been almost 20 years since the Baroque group Les Arts Florissants brought Read More

By Zachary Woolfe 11/11/09 12:30am

City Opera’s Long Weekend

When the lights went up Sunday afternoon on a shirtless man next to a pantsless man—both American, both young—I knew that City Opera was back. It was the start of the second act of Mozart’s Don Giovanni, and the two men were playing the eponymous antihero and his servant, Leporello.

Christopher Alden’s new production Read More

By Joe Pompeo 10/13/09 10:14pm

A Night at the Uproar: George Steel Weathers Coup Attempt!

It’s been a tumultuous few years at the New York City Opera. It has been continually plagued by financial troubles, and leadership of the organization has been haphazard since Paul Kellogg announced he was planning to leave the position of general and artistic director in 2005. Controversy dogged the short tenure of French impresario Gerard Read More

By Zachary Woolfe 7/08/09 12:36am

The Bewitching Art of ‘La Cieca’

“It wasn’t my intention to get notoriety,” James Jorden said. It was a sunny morning, and he was sitting at a cafe near his home in Woodside, Queens, where he lives with his partner, Carl (“Queens is where all the queens are going now,” he says).

As an avid reader of his Web site about Read More

By Sharon Barbour 6/25/09 8:26pm

Socialites Shop For Opera; $125 Chanel!

By 6:30 p.m. on Wednesday, June 24, a Divas Shop for Opera Shopping and Cocktails benefit for the New York City Opera, held at a “pop-up” shop on Madison Avenue, had turned into a fashion frenzy. Ravenous shoppers sprawled two floors, prowling the racks and grabbing Manolos, Louboutins, Dior frocks, and more. A Read More