“The orchestra musicians and several of the principal singers of the New York City Opera have decided that the company’s 70th anniversary should be commemorated, bankruptcy and closing notwithstanding,” writes Allan Kozinn in Wednesday’s (1/15) New York Times. “The company’s demise has put its musicians out of work, and a concert honoring the anniversary seemed to them the proper way to address that. So on Feb. 21, the 60 players of the New York City Opera Orchestra will be joined by a starry vocal crew—the sopranos Lauren Flanigan and Joélle Harvey, the mezzo-soprano Jennifer Rivera, the tenor Ryan MacPherson and the baritones Mark Delavan and Sidney Outlaw—for a concert at the New York City Center, where the company was born in 1944. The program … called ‘New York City Opera Orchestra and Stars Celebrate 70 Years of the People’s Opera’—[is] an allusion to nickname coined by Fiorello LaGuardia, New York City’s mayor when the company was founded…. George Manahan, City Opera’s former music director, will conduct. The proceeds from the concert will be donated to the Emergency Relief Fund, which was started in 1967 by Local 802 of the American Federation of Musicians, to provide financial aid to musicians in need.”
Posted January 16, 2014
