New York City Opera and the American Guild of Musical Artists, the union representing singers and production personnel at the company, will return to negotiations in either May or June, according to AGMA executive director Alan Gordon.

As previously reported, AGMA had declared that a strike beginning April 30 seemed "a virtual certainty" if no agreement was reached by April 29. That proposition is no longer on the table: "They made a pitch to us that having a one-day strike would only hurt them and not give us more leverage," Gordon said. "Particularly, they don't really know what they can do yet, so we decided we'd go along with that and not strike."

Gordon described the New York City Opera representatives as "being as reasonable as they could be." He continued, "We wanted to get their attention. We got their attention."