In the Arts: Abandoning Lincoln Center Raises Questions for City Opera

New York City Opera veterans and opera-world leaders expressed regret Monday over the organization’s decision to leave Lincoln Center, with many blaming the opera’s board for its financial woes, says The New York Times.

The deficit-racked opera announced Friday that it would leave its longtime home as part of a plan to slash costs. Union officials claim the cutbacks represent an effort by the opera to end guaranteed contracts for singers and musicians.

The move presents daunting logistical challenges for City Opera, which has yet to announce performance spaces or productions for a new season due to start in five months.

Leaving Lincoln Center “would in essence be the end of the New York City Opera as we know it and love it,” said Julius Rudel, the company’s principal conductor from 1957 to 1979.

In other arts news, the future of government grants to Virginia cultural organizations is unclear in the wake of a legal opinion that such payments to charities violate the state’s constitution, writes The Washington Post.

Attorney General Ken T. Cuccinelli said in January that the Virginia constitution allows payments to private nonprofit groups only in the form of contracts for services.

The state has rewritten contracts to keep money flowing to health and social-service organizations, but museums, symphonies, and other arts and culture groups worry that “nonstate agency grants”—legislative earmarks on which they have come to depend for support—will not return.