By ALLAN KOZINN [NY Times, 25 October 2005]

The New York City Opera, sensibly enough, regards its large repertory of standard works in efficient, mostly traditional stagings as its box-office bread and butter. But if you think back over the company's productions of the last 15 years, contemporary works - Zimmermann's "Soldaten," Hindemith's "Mathis der Maler," Carlisle Floyd's "Of Mice and Men" and Hugo Weisgall's "Esther" among them - have been the clear highlights. They have typically had short runs and they rarely return, but they are the soul of this company.