NEW YORK (AP) — Constantine Orbelian was promoted Tuesday to executive director of the largely dormant New York City Opera, which hasn’t given a staged performance since 2022 and says it will return with William Grant Still’s “Troubled Island” at City Center in 2025-26.
Orbelian, 68, became music director for the 2021-22 season and added the title of executive director one day after Michael Capasso’s retirement as general director was announced by board chairman emeritus Roy G. Niederhoffer.
“I’m a person who likes to try to resurrect things. I have a kind of a pretty good track record of doing that,” Orbelian said.
City Opera has been limited to occasional recitals and parks performances since 2022, when it gave the world premiere of Ricky Ian Gordon’s “The Garden of the Finzi Continis” at the National Yiddish Theatre Folksbiene and performances of Peter Rothstein’s “All Is Calm: The Christmas Truce of 1914″ at Sacred Heart University in Fairfield, Connecticut.
Its tax return for the year ending in June 2023 showed assets of $977,303 and liabilities of $2,055,101. Contributions and grants declined to $599,634 from $1.22 million in 2021-22 and ticket revenue was $237,547.
“There needs to be, of course, a minimal amount of money to be able to function,” Orbelian said. “We’re not going to jump into huge deficits or anything like that,.”
City Opera gave its first performance in 1944 and presented more than 100 in some seasons, first at City Center and then at Lincoln Center’s New York State Theater starting in 1966. It gave exposure to Beverly Sills, Plácido Domingo and Renée Fleming early in their careers.
Its fortunes began to decline when it skipped its regular 2008-09 season to allow renovations at the State Theater, then appointed George Steele as general director in 2009. City Opera filed for bankruptcy in 2013, returned in 2016 and presented several productions per season through 2018-19, then dropped two in 2019-20 — cut to one because of the pandemic. Its endowment shrunk from $48 million in 2008 to $5.1 million in 2012 to $1.4 million in 2022, according to tax returns.
Capasso said the decision to leave was made by him and not the board. His plan in 2016 had been to eventually reach 75 performances per season.
“It was hard. And it’s going to be more difficult even now,” he said. “I’ll direct something in Europe where I don’t have to worry about paying for it, somebody else’s paying for it or the government’s paying for it.”
Orbelian was music director of the Moscow Chamber Orchestra from 1991-2010, and general and artistic director of the State Academic Opera and Ballet Theater in Yerevan, Armenia, from 2016-21. He has been principal conductor of the Kaunas City Symphony Orchestra since 2014.
He said he increased the Moscow Chamber Orchestra’s schedule to 150 concerts per year outside of Russia.
‘I kind of resurrected the Armenian opera house by bringing in 14 new productions in three years when they had four productions in the previous 18 years,” he said. “I love a challenge.”
“Troubled Island,” with a libretto by Langston Hughes and Verna Arvey, was given its world premiere by City Opera on March 31, 1949, and was the first opera by a Black composer produced by a major U.S. company. The work focuses on Jean Jacques Dessalines and a Haitian revolution.
City Opera plans a Carnegie Hall concert this season of works by Mieczysław Weinberg and Erich Wolfgang Korngold. Orbelian said future plans include Pietro Mascagni’s “Isabeau,” a co-production with Opera Holland Park that was presented in London in 2018.
“Tomorrow we’re not going to be building new sets,” Orbelian said, “but we do have 15 productions that we actually own that are in the warehouse, and a number of them have not been done yet here in New York.”
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