NEW YORK– Constantine Orbelian was promoted Tuesday to executive director of the largely dormant New York City Opera, which has not given a stage performance since 2022 and says it will return with William Grant Still’s “Troubled Island” at the City Center in 2025-26.
Orbelian, 68, became music director for the 2021-2022 season and added the title of executive director a day after Michael Capasso’s retirement as general manager was announced by chairman emeritus Roy G. Niederhoffer.
“I am someone who likes to try to breathe new life into things. I have pretty good results with that,” Orbelian said.
City Opera has been limited to occasional recitals and performances in parks since 2022, when it gave the world premiere of Ricky Ian Gordon’s “The Garden of the Finzi Continis” at the National Yiddish Theater Folksbiene and performances of Peter Rothstein’s “All Is Calm: The Christmas Truce of 1914″ at Sacred Heart University in Fairfield, Connecticut.
The tax return for the year ending June 2023 showed assets of $977,303 and liabilities of $2,055,101. Contributions and grants fell from $1.22 million in 2021-2022 to $599,634, and ticket revenue was $237,547.
“Of course, there must be a minimum amount of money to function,” Orbelian said. “We’re not going to run into major 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 from 1966 at the New York State Theater at Lincoln Center. Beverly Sills, Plácido Domingo and Renée Fleming rose to prominence early in their careers. .
Its fortunes began to decline when it skipped the 2008–09 regular season to accommodate renovations at the State Theater and then named George Steele general manager in 2009. City Opera filed for bankruptcy in 2013, returned in 2016 and presented several productions per season. In 2018-19, two fell in 2019-20 – reduced to one due to the pandemic. According to tax returns, the endowment has shrunk from $48 million in 2008 to $5.1 million in 2012 and to $1.4 million in 2022.
Capasso said the decision to leave was made by him and not the board. His plan in 2016 was to eventually reach 75 appearances per season.
“It was difficult. And even now it will be even more difficult,” he said. “I’m going to direct something in Europe where I don’t have to worry about paying for it, someone else paying for it or the government paying for it.”
Orbelian was music director of the Moscow Chamber Orchestra from 1991 to 2010 and general and artistic director of the State Academic Opera and Ballet Theater in Yerevan, Armenia, from 2016 to 2021. Since 2014 he has been chief conductor of the Kaunas City Symphony Orchestra.
He said he had expanded the Moscow Chamber Orchestra’s schedule to 150 concerts a year outside Russia.
“I revived the Armenian Opera House a bit by putting on 14 new productions in three years, compared to four productions in the previous 18 years,” he said. “I like a challenge.”
‘Troubled Island’, with a libretto by Langston Hughes and Verna Arvey, had its world premiere at the City Opera on March 31, 1949 and was the first opera by a black composer to be produced by a major American company. The work focuses on Jean Jacques Dessalines and a Haitian revolution.
City Opera is planning a concert at Carnegie Hall this season with 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.
“We’re not going to build any new sets tomorrow,” Orbelian said, “but we do have 15 productions that we actually own and are in the warehouse, and some of them aren’t ready yet here in New York.”
