“New York City Opera, which has struggled to raise money since emerging from bankruptcy in 2016 and was forced to sharply curtail its current season to cut costs, announced this week that its board chairman—and biggest benefactor—was stepping down,” writes Michael Cooper in Friday’s (2/15) New York Times. “The departing chairman, Roy G. Niederhoffer, a hedge fund manager who played a key role in the effort to revive City Opera after it closed and filed for bankruptcy in 2013, said … that he was leaving the board for personal reasons…. City Opera [canceled] Robert Ward’s opera ‘The Crucible’ [this season] as part of its efforts to halve the year’s operating budget…. Its board is down to a mere three members.… Mr. Niederhoffer praised [general director Michael] Capasso for taking the company out of bankruptcy, saying they had succeeded in every area ‘save one…. The fund-raising proved much more difficult than we anticipated,’ he said…. The value of City Opera’s endowment fund dropped to $3.4 million as of the end of June 2017.… Mr. Rosen, the new chairman, said that he expected to be able to build up the board and a new group of donors.”
Posted February 19, 2019
