DISSERTATION ABSTRACT

Tedrin Blair Lindsay
The Development of a Core Repertoire of American Operas
at New York City Opera under Julius Rudel, 1957-1979

In early 1958, the publicity department at New York City Opera circulated a pamphlet entitled “A Panorama of Opera, U.S.A.” to advertise its upcoming spring season.  It featured the usual opera synopses and ticket information, but with a singular twist: all of the operas were American.  The booklet began with a bold introductory statement by the company’s new general director, Julius Rudel (b. 1921), who therein invited the public to participate in an exciting historic effort (Julius Rudel, “A Panorama of Opera, U.S.A.” (New York: New York City Opera Publicity, 1958), 2.):

The most important and ambitious season the New York City Opera Company has ever undertaken is described on the following pages. It is the first presentation anywhere of a repertory made up entirely of music-dramatic works created by American composers and writers. This unprecedented season is a toast to the coming of age of opera in the United States ….

Thus was heralded the intentional suffusion of American opera into the already adventuresome repertoire of New York’s populist opera company. 
Over the next two decades, New York City Opera cultivated a core repertoire of American operas and an audience for them through the vision and initiative of Julius Rudel and his administrative colleagues at New York City Center, the umbrella organization of which New York City Opera was a constituent, and the Ford Foundation, which financed the American opera program.  The venture evolved in several stages, beginning with three entire spring seasons and a national tour devoted exclusively to American opera, followed by several seasons in which American repertoire was blended with contemporary European and Latin American works.  Both of these thrusts were nurtured through an aggressive program of commissioning and producing new American operas, far more than any other company.  The policies and procedures whereby New York City Opera cultivated this specialized repertoire in concentrated activity sustained over two decades form the crux of this study.

This dissertation examines the long-term process of experimental programming and extension of the repertoire by commissioning new works and assimilating older ones through which Rudel and others, such as Newbold Morris and Morton Baum, respectively Chairmen of the Board and Finance Committee of New York City Center, Jean Dalrymple, Director of City Center Theatre and Light Opera Companies, and W. McNeil Lowry, Director of the Ford Foundation’s Program in Humanities and the Arts engendered the success of the plan to integrate American opera into the repertoire of a vibrantly growing opera company. New York City Opera and Ford Foundation annals, in-house communications, press releases and articles, and numerous pieces of professional and personal correspondence are the primary sources documenting the artistic policies and creative decisions that guided the American opera initiative. Through analytical and interpretive engagement with these sources, this study will explore how the attitudes, ideologies, and actions of the key administrative figures directly influenced the development of the first mature generation of American operas.