There was a collective intake of breath. Whoever America’s largely conservative operatic world expected as the next director at the New York City Opera, it was not the musical agent-provocateur Gerard Mortier. And whatever Europe expected of Mortier, it was not that he would land a job in New York.

Within weeks of the announcement last year that Mortier was to take over the leadership of the New York City Opera, there were rumours. The sponsors would leave in droves. The tickets would never sell. The renovations would be a catastrophe.