Even Catastrophic Economic Upheavals Can Have a Silver Lining

It would seem even catastrophic economic upheavals can have a silver lining.

The New York City Opera’s bold effort at reinvention ended in fiasco on Friday when the company announced that its designated leader, the provocative impresario Gerard Mortier, was pulling out amid the company’s financial difficulties.

Mr. Mortier’s departure came to light 21 months after City Opera had proclaimed him as its savior, saying he would take on the job as general manager and artistic director in the 2009-10 season. It agreed to his plans to scrap old-fashioned traditions, mount challenging 20th-century works, bring opera to the people in their neighborhoods and extensively renovate the company’s home, the New York State Theater, rather than try to find a new building.

[...]

Speaking from his apartment in Ghent, Belgium, Mr. Mortier said he decided to resign when it became clear that the board would not give him the money needed to produce a meaningful slate of opera productions. He said that from the start he had been promised a budget of $60 million, a number even mentioned in his contract. But the board was prepared to approve only $36 million, he said, not much more than the basic fixed costs of running the company, leaving him little room for innovative productions.

Beverly, wherever her soul might now be residing, must be breathing a huge sigh of relief, so to speak.

But we don't mean to be entirely negative about Mr. Mortier here. To the extent that he would have focused his attentions on presenting a "meaningful slate of opera productions" of new or little- or never-heard late-20th- and 21st-century works, Mr. Mortier's bowing out is a loss for both the NYCO in particular, and for the world of opera generally. But to the extent he would have turned his attentions to commissioning postmodern (read, Eurotrash) productions of the 18th-, 19th-, and pre-war-20th-century rep — a notorious, career-long Mortier trademark — Mr. Mortier's departure is a blessing for all concerned.

RTWT here.