Century of progress?

New York City Opera has announced its 2010-2011 season, and it looks like La Cieca’s precognitions were about 90% correct. (Please, hold your applause.)

According to the company’s press release, the season (beginning October 28) features mostly 20th century works, including

New York premieres, in new productions, of Leonard Bernstein’s A Quiet Place and Stephen Schwartz’s Séance on a Wet Afternoon; a daring triple bill of Monodramas (including the US stage premiere of “Neither” by Morton Feldman and Samuel Beckett, and the world stage premiere of John Zorn’s “La Machine de l’être”, performed with Schoenberg’s “Erwartung”); and the return of Strauss’s Intermezzo and Donizetti’s The Elixir of Love

What apparently began life as a revival of the company’s venerable Turandot has evolved into “An Evening with Christine Brewer” season opening gala.

Gushes NYCO GM/AD George Steel, “Most of all, I love the incredible range of compositional styles this season: from the transparent simplicity of Donizetti to the opulent middle-period Richard Strauss to the blend of the popular and classical worlds in Bernstein and Stephen Schwartz—all this topped off by the delicious trio of Schoenberg, Feldman and Zorn. This is what City Opera was made to do, and what makes City Opera unique.”