The first opera was Puccini's Tosca, presented at the Rose Theater at Jazz at Lincoln Center in January 2016.

The group, led at the time by Roy Niederhoffer, a hedge fund manager and former board member of the NYCO, announced plans to present a season of opera in 2016−17. In January 2016, a nonprofit group, NYCO Renaissance, revived the opera company under new management when its reorganization plans for the company to leave bankruptcy and re-launch performances were approved in bankruptcy court.

On October 1, 2013, following an unsuccessful emergency fund-raising campaign, the company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. In the 2011−−13 seasons, NYCO performed four operas at various venues in New York City, including the Brooklyn Academy of Music. In 2011, the company left Lincoln Center due to financial difficulties and moved its offices to 75 Broad Street in Lower Manhattan. During this time it produced autumn and spring seasons of opera in repertory, and maintained extensive education and outreach programs, offering arts-in-education programs to 4,000 students in over 30 schools. It later became part of the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts at the New York State Theater from 1966 to 2010.

The company was originally housed at the New York City Center theater on West 55th Street in Manhattan. It also sought to produce an innovative choice of repertory, and provide a home for American singers and composers. The company's stated purpose was to make opera accessible to a wide audience at a reasonable ticket price. The opera company, dubbed 'the people's opera' by New York Mayor Fiorello La Guardia, was founded in 1943. The company has been active from 1943 through 2013 (when it filed for bankruptcy), and again since 2016 when it was revived. The New York City Opera (NYCO) is an American opera company located in Manhattan in New York City.

Metropolitan opera house black singers