Opera lovers hope Mr. Steel’s arrival will quell the turbulent plotlines at what many consider the nation’s second most important house. Founded in 1943, with help from Mayor Fiorello H. La Guardia, as the “people’s opera,” City Opera has the mission of offering accessible, affordable, innovative productions hospitable to young American singers. The company’s recent struggles could fill a libretto of jilted lovers, betrayal and sudden changes of fortune.
“George is actually the perfect person for City Opera in this chapter of its institutional life,” said the house’s chairwoman, Susan L. Baker. “He is scrappy, flexible, adaptable, charming and innovative.”
The board met for final approval late Wednesday, a day before the company was to give the first of two concert performances of Samuel Barber’s “Antony and Cleopatra” at Carnegie Hall, the centerpiece of its minimalist season. At Mr. Mortier’s urging City Opera has remained almost entirely inactive while its Lincoln Center home, the David H. Koch Theater, is being renovated. The loss of revenues, high fixed expenses and the recession have all left the company in economic jeopardy. Mr. Steel is to start Feb. 1.
His hiring came as a blow to the smaller and less prestigious Dallas Opera, where he had just started as general director in October. The company is to move into the glamorous new Winspear Opera House next fall.
“It’s the opportunity of a lifetime,” Mr. Steel said in explaining his jump to City Opera.
For months, and as recently as Dec. 22, Mr. Steel sought to quash rumors that he was interested in the job, saying he was happy in Dallas and denying outright that he was in talks. But in an interview this week Mr. Steel said he was seriously approached by City Opera in mid-December and gave it earnest consideration during a Christmas break at the home of his in-laws in Washington. He called the decision wrenching.
“Being asked to play a role in its future is something I really couldn’t brush off and take lightly,” he said of City Opera. The “outpouring of support” from the opera world for an institution in crisis helped solidify his decision, he added. “New York is unthinkable without it,” he said.
The president of the Dallas Opera board, Kern Wildenthal, said there were no hard feelings and called the separation amicable. “George Steel is a very talented young man,” he said. “When he accepted this job, I suspect he never thought the opportunity to direct the City Opera would come along in the near future.” Mr. Wildenthal continued, “We cannot feel bad about the opera world sorting itself out in a beneficial way for all concerned.”
Mr. Steel, 42, is also a conductor. He made his name as the executive director of the Miller Theater at Columbia University for 11 years, turning it into an important part of the musical scene in New York with imaginative offerings of contemporary and early music. Other than his three months in Dallas, he has no experience running an opera house, although the Miller presented about a dozen small opera productions during his tenure. He also has no experience raising money on the scale required by City Opera.
What he will have to work with is up in the air. Ms. Baker said that next season would be truncated, with fewer than 10 productions, partly because of continuing renovations, but also to save money. In its glory days the company produced nearly twice as many operas.
Mr. Mortier, an iconoclastic Belgian-born opera manager known for provocative productions, was named to lead City Opera in February 2007 but was to take up the post full-time only next season, after finishing his term in Paris. He brought a radical plan for mainly 20th-century operas, off-site performances and nonoverlapping productions. Many in the opera world were skeptical about the choice from the start. Mr. Mortier dismayed City Opera board members by making a bid in August to run the Bayreuth Festival in Germany.
But at the time his appointment was also seen as a challenge to the rising fortunes of the Metropolitan Opera across Lincoln Center Plaza, where a relatively new general manager, Peter Gelb, had seized the mantle of innovation. The Met too now faces serious financial pressures, along with the rest of the opera and orchestra world amid declining markets.
Although Ms. Baker said that it was too early to say what the City Opera annual budget would be, she predicted it would fall in the “30-ish” millions of dollars, instead of the roughly $42 million of previous seasons. She painted a dire picture of the endowment. It stood at $22 million at the end of November, she said, compared with $45 million three months earlier.
While City Opera is taking in minimal income, it is still paying the chorus and orchestra at least $4.7 million this year, as well as administrative costs. The orchestra’s contract expires in the spring. While formal negotiations have yet to begin, Ms. Baker said management would seek concessions, and added that the company’s unions are “aware of the challenging financial situation and the need to create a viable budget.”
Donations remain strong, said Michael M. Kaiser, president of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, who is advising the company gratis. “They have a very loyal donor base,” he said. “What’s been harmed is their ability to go out to get new donors.”
He said that he was confident City Opera could put on a season despite the lack of planning in a field where casts, directors and conductors are fixed years in advance. “The level of goodwill toward the City Opera is just mammoth,” he said.
Yet controversy dogged City Opera even as it struggled to right itself this week. Francesca Zambello, a prominent opera and theater director, said she had been offered the job of artistic director on Dec. 30 under a plan that would include a separate executive director. But Ms. Baker withdrew the offer on Jan. 7, Ms. Zambello said, adding that the board chairman wanted a sole leader working “24-7.”
Ms. Zambello said that her main concern was the long-term health of a much-beloved opera company, which she claimed was being mismanaged by the board. “They are destroying a public institution by their actions, which are unconscionable,” she said.
Ms. Baker said that account was “absolutely not correct” and denied having offered Ms. Zambello the position.
Mr. Steel offered few details of his forthcoming tenure. “My plans are to dive headfirst into the work and solve both short-term and long-term problems at the same time,” he said. “I want to continue City Opera’s remarkable legacy in all kinds of operas,” he added, mentioning the works of Handel, Rameau, Gluck, as well as less familiar 19th-century works and world premieres. He singled out “A Quiet Place,” with music by Leonard Bernstein, and “The Flood,” a Stravinsky work originally written for television, as “germs of ideas.”
Mr. Steel said he might try his hand on the podium with a favorite work, but not until after his first season on the job.
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