The opera’s departure would be the first major defection from America’s premier arts complex, although City Opera has been talking about a move for 30 years. The New York Philharmonic also flirted with the idea of relocating, to Carnegie Hall in 2003, but that deal fell through.
After leadership turmoil, a canceled season and severe financial difficulties, the current move represents yet another sharp drop in prestige at City Opera. Founded in 1943 as the “people’s opera company,” it has nurtured great artists like Beverly Sills, Samuel Ramey, Plácido Domingo and Sherrill Milnes.
Apparently the board, which met in a daylong session on Thursday and continued discussions on Friday morning, saw moving as the only way to keep the company breathing. Abandoning the David H. Koch Theater will save $4.5 million in yearly costs, company officials said.
“We love Lincoln Center,” said George Steel, City Opera’s general manager and artistic director. “It’s a wonderful place. But the reality is that the fixed costs of living here are simply too high. That’s why we are looking at leaving.”
He added, “I think we’re leaving for good.”
But many questions remained. Mr. Steel declined to identify what operas the company would perform or where. He also refused to give the amount of the budget, although he said it would be “significantly smaller” than this year’s budget of $22 million. Charles R. Wall, the chairman, said, “We just don’t want that information to be in the public domain.”
This season’s deficit amounted to $5 million. Mr. Wall pledged to make up half of the gap and said efforts were under way to cover the rest. Meanwhile, the endowment, which was raided to pay for operating losses and shrank further in a bad economy, has dropped to $9 million from a recent high of $55 million.
Now, just five months before the season, potential ticket buyers do not know what music they will hear, who will be singing, what the tickets will cost or where to go to take their seats. The prospect is almost mind-boggling in a world where schedules are fixed years ahead.
Mr. Steel did say that two of the five productions would be on a smaller scale — Baroque works or the like — and would play in theaters of, say, 300 to 900 seats. The others would be in a “relatively unorthodox” performance space comparable in size to the Koch theater, which has about 2,600 seats. The company is also looking for administrative offices.
“My plan is to establish a home base for the company at a single venue and branch out,” Mr. Steel said. “We have a very good idea where we will do these productions.” City Opera also presented five operas in each of the last two seasons, compared with four times as many in past decades.
It was also not clear what legal and contractual steps were necessary to part company with Lincoln Center, or what the effect would be on the whole complex.
“The relationship is too complicated for me to summarize it handily,” Mr. Steel said. “We are going to sit down with all of the stakeholders and have a discussion.”
A Lincoln Center spokeswoman, Betsy Vorce, said it was “premature for us to comment on New York City Opera’s situation” and declined to address what the financial effect on Lincoln Center would be.
City Opera has long been frustrated by the poor acoustics of the Koch Theater, which were primarily designed to muffle the footfalls of the dancers of its co-tenant, New York City Ballet. It had previously looked at locations including the World Trade Center site and Damrosch Park in Lincoln Center.