For a man who has been dubbed the “bad boy” of opera — a nickname that, for the record, he dislikes — Gérard Mortier is remarkably gentle.

Mr. Mortier, who is the incoming general manager of New York City Opera, is warm and expansive in conversation. He is also, counter to the image summoned by the “bad boy” moniker, something of a romantic idealist about the potential of art to move people and bring them together.

In an hour-long interview in Central Park yesterday, he gave a preview of his plans for the 2009-2010 season and described his wish to create a community among the artists and the audience at City Opera, similar to the bond that residents of American cities once felt to their local symphonies.

Mr. Mortier believes that art has an important role to play in countering the cynicism of modern life. “For me, music and theater must be a human experience,” he said. When you go to the opera, “You want to have a beautiful evening, but it should be different from going to a nice restaurant,” in that “two months later you are still thinking about it, like a love affair.”

The 2009-2010 season — which will be Mr. Mortier’s first fully in residence, since for the next two years he is finishing his tenure as director of the Paris National Opera — will be devoted to 20th-century works. It will open, as he has said before, with Stravinsky’s “The Rake’s Progress,” and will include two other icons of American opera: Philip Glass’s “Einstein on the Beach” and John Adams’s “Nixon in China.” The English tenor Ian Bostridge will sing in a production of Benjamin Britten’s “Death in Venice.”

In accordance with Mr. Mortier’s previously expressed desire to take City Opera to other parts of the city, the first season will include a production of Messiaen’s “St. Francis of Assisi,” at the Park Avenue Armory and Drill Hall, where it will be performed amid an installation by the artist Ilya Kabakov. (The painter Anselm Kiefer is also lined up to design an opera set, Mr. Mortier said.) There will be other productions at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, the Apollo Theater in Harlem, and, pending negotiations, Jazz at Lincoln Center’s Rose Theater.

Having said in the past that he wants to expand City Opera’s budget, Mr. Mortier said yesterday that he had just secured a $2 million grant from a major foundation — he didn’t name it, so that they could make the announcement themselves — which is planned to be the first of a fiveyear series of grants, totaling $10 million.

In general, future seasons will include five productions at the New York State Theater — which Mr. Mortier is in discussions with New York City Ballet’s artistic director, Peter Martins, about renovating — and five productions elsewhere. This is feasible because Mr. Mortier is moving City Opera to a stagione system, where one opera runs at a time, rather than several different ones during the course of a week, as in the American repertory system.

Mr. Mortier, who has long been interested in bringing art to a broad public, will expand the Opera-for-All program, which currently offers $25 tickets to three performances in the fall, to run through the whole season, with 40,000 tickets available between $5 and $20. He will also organize educational concerts, to be held on Saturday or Sunday afternoons, which will combine a musical performance with a kind of talk-show format, in which Mr. Mortier will converse with a celebrity guest, possibly an actor or a rock singer, who is an opera fan.

Mr. Mortier is confident that he can win New Yorkers to 20th-century material. In Paris, he said, he often gives introductory talks in the lobby 45 minutes before the curtain, to whoever wants to listen, and he plans to do the same in New York. “Everyone can love Stravinsky and Janáček,” he said. “When you talk to them for 20 minutes, they go with a different attitude into the theater.”

To introduce himself to New Yorkers, and begin to create the community he wishes to have, Mr. Mortier will give a series of three lectures on his vision of opera at the Morgan Library & Museum, beginning in March.

For future seasons, Philip Glass is writing a new opera, as is Bernice Johnson Reagon of the a cappella group Sweet Honey in the Rock. In response to his statements that he would like to have more African-Americans in the audience at City Opera, Mr. Mortier said, he received a “very nice” letter from Harry Belafonte, whom he plans to meet with.

Mr. Mortier, who is originally Flemish, ran Belgium’s national opera company, La Monnaie, and the Salzburg Festival before going to the Paris National Opera. “I wanted to find out if I could do it,” he said of the Paris company, which has a $200 million budget and 1,700 employees.

So why go from there to City Opera, where the current budget is only $40 million?

First of all, in France, Mr. Mortier, who is a very youthful 63, would have to retire in two years. Second, Susan Baker, the chairwoman of City Opera, refused to accept his initial no and went on a campaign to convince him that he would have complete freedom to remodel the company. “She sent me a big letter with the title, ‘Everything Is Possible,'” he said.

Mr. Mortier thinks that New Yorkers, since the attacks of September 11th, 2001, are more aware of the fragility of life and cognizant of what art can contribute to a fulfilled existence. “We live in a world where if you show emotion, you’re a loser,” he said. “In theater, we show that losers have a right to live, too. All the heroes of Verdi are losers.”

As for his “bad boy” image, Mr. Mortier acknowledged that he does like controversy. “I like to move things,” he said, stirring his hands in the air. “When water doesn’t move, it turns bad.” Still, he said, his goal is not to shock people, but to make them think and feel. “I don’t want them to run away,” he said of his audience. “I want them to come back!”