When the New York City Opera Company stops trying to compete with the Metropolitan and sticks to lighthearted masterpieces or frank innovations—Mozart's Marriage of Figaro, Rossini's Cinderella, Prokofiev's The Love for Three Oranges, Berg's Wozzeck—it is hard to beat. But it has had trouble keeping its conductor-managers. The man who runs the City Opera, like any opera manager, must be diplomatic, versatile and tough; he must convince the public that his programs are worthwhile, his singers that they are getting parts worthy of their talents, his board of directors that he knows what he is doing. At the City Opera, he has had to do all this on a starvation budget.
The City Opera's first general director was Hungarian-born Laszlo Halasz, who spent eight years getting it established, while sidestepping a series of attacks brought on by his toplofty manner. The last arose after his baton flew out of his hand and struck a player. Able Conductor Halasz was sacked in 1951 and replaced by Austrian-born Joseph Rosenstock who staged a world premiere (Copland's The Tender Land) that failed, a New York premiere (Walton's Troilus and Cressida) that succeeded, two gloomy but interesting U.S. stage premieres (Von Einem's The Trial and Bartok's Blue beard's Castle). He did only passably well by standard repertory, and the board of directors could rarely agree on just what kind of opera it wanted.
Last week the board accepted Rosen-stock's resignation—he complained of too much nonmusical work, e.g., bookings and business negotiations. He will return to Tokyo, to conduct the Nippon Broadcasting Symphony, of which he was musical director before and after World War II.
His successor: Vienna-born Erich Leinsdorf, 43, onetime conductor at the Metropolitan Opera, the Cleveland Orchestra, and now the Rochester Philharmonic.