Mortier bails out

Gerard Mortier has quit before staging his first production as general director of the New York City Opera, dissatisfied with a $36 million annual budget for the financially strapped institution.

“I cannot go to run a company that has less than the smallest company in France. You don't need me for that," Mortier tells Daniel J. Wakin of The New York Times:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/08/arts/music/08oper.html?hp

George Manahan, the former Richmond Symphony music director, now in his 12th year as the City Opera's music director, was to have been a key figure in Mortier's planned emphasis on modern and contemporary operas.