City Lyric Opera of New York Cancels Baroque Festival Due to Lack of Federal Funding
By Francisco SalazarThe City Lyric Opera of New York has canceled its Baroque Festival scheduled for March 6 through 8, 2025.
The cancelation was due to Federal funding from the NEA that was never received.
Mezzo-soprano Michaela Wright who was set to perform took to social media and said, “I feel it’s time to finally share that my upcoming baroque recital for City Lyric Opera’s Baroque Festival has been indefinitely postponed due to Federal Grant funding cuts for the arts. The grant money that CLO has received for the past 5 years was going to be used to fund the festival and unfortunately, due to nationwide cuts for federal art funding, they did not receive said funding this year.”
She added, “VALIDATE, VENERATE, VINDICATE was a recital I curated to uplift and empower women by performing music that validated their experiences, celebrated their accomplishments, and had an overarching theme of acknowledging women’s struggle with gender-inequality and of their voices being silenced for centuries. We had a chamber e nsemble of women-identifying baroque instrumentalists, and an all female-identifying production crew. It was a project I put my heart and soul into, one that truly meant the world to me, and had a message that felt incredibly necessary to share at the present time.”
Rocky Duval, who was also supposed to perform added, “Well, it’s happening. The money that would have funded this show I wrote was coming from the NEA. And it just…never came. I’m devastated. I know we have to fight fascism with Art. I know it. But it’s moments like this when I feel the fatigue of being an artist. We might do a guerrilla showing of this show somewhere for fun, so if we do I’ll keep you posted. Anna Girò’s story is so beautiful, and I want you to hear it. I’m also double sad because this (almost) all girl band of baroque musicians was gonna be so good.”
The Baroque Festival was set to take place at the Center at West Park.
The news comes as the National Endowment for the Arts said that it is eliminating a funding program that supports diversity, equity, and inclusion and underserved communities. Instead, the federal agency will prioritize programs that celebrate the 250th anniversary of the United States.
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