'These are difficult economic times,' said Edd Snyder, spokesman for the GM Foundation, the division that handles the company's philanthropic contributions to community organizations, including the arts. 'It has always been important to us to support the institutions of this community. We appreciate them, and we know our support has been appreciated in turn.'

Snyder said the foundation advised Detroit's 'high-profile' arts organizations in late 2008 that all pledges were off for this year because of the automaker's dire financial condition. He said the company will continue to help in small ways.

For example, Snyder said, if the DSO were to give a fund-raising dinner, the foundation might buy a table for a few thousand dollars, but it is not in a position to continue making large gifts for now.

GM's decision to suspend funding came the same month the company was criticized by Congress while seeking a federal bailout. GM received $4 billion of a promised $13.4 billion on Dec. 31.

MOT's coming spring season will be the first without the GM Foundation's title sponsorship, in the name of Cadillac, since the Detroit Opera House opened in 1996.

Responding to other economic pressures, MOT general director David DiChiera already had canceled one spring production, Leoncavallo's 'I Pagliacci,' leaving only Donizetti's 'The Elixir of Love' -- a new production created jointly with the San Francisco Opera -- and Bizet's 'Carmen.'

DiChiera, who had whittled his current budget from $14 million to $12 million even before the GM Foundation bombshell, says that while the loss of GM's sponsorship will force further belt-tightening, he will not drop another opera from the spring season.

But neither does he plan to restore a third spring production in 2010.

'We did anticipate a cut in GM's support,' said DiChiera. 'I thought it might be down by 50 percent ($125,000). But the total loss means we must find new creative ways to pare costs and try to find other funding resources.

'Right now, my greatest concern is meeting the bond (mortgage) payments on the parking garage and opera house,' he said. MOT's debt on those two structures amounts to $18 million.

But DiChiera is also anxious about his stellar dance series, for which the Chrysler Foundation has long provided key funding.

Mary Beth Halperin, spokeswoman for Chrysler LLC, said the company is still mulling the level of philanthropic commitments it can make this year.

'Support for arts organizations in Detroit continues to be very important for Chrysler,' said Halperin.

The DSO's $100,000 loss of GM support is proportionally less severe against its $31 million budget. DSO spokeswoman Elizabeth Twork said that, like MOT, the orchestra had already been scurrying to find other sources of contributed income, especially among individual donors.

But Music Hall President Vince Paul said he was stunned by the disappearance of $350,000, or nearly 6 percent of his $6 million budget.

'We've tried to stay out ahead of this by finding other resources,' said Paul, 'but the loss of corporate support hurts. DTE, which had been there for years, is suddenly gone. And now GM ... that's our dance series.'

Of the GM Foundation's annual contribution to the Music Hall, $100,000 helps to pay for Paul's series of ethnic and modernist dance presentations.

Sounding like a trouper, Paul vowed that the shows would go on. 'GM was our flagship,' he said, 'but we've come up with a lot of new individual gifting to replace some of the old corporate slam dunks.'

Kate Storey, spokeswoman for The Henry Ford, said all outstanding pledges from the GM Foundation and Chrysler Corp. have been paid up.

Pam Marcil, spokeswoman for the Detroit Institute of Arts, declined to comment, citing a policy of never discussing charitable contributions.

The Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History is waiting for $100,000 from a pledge by GM for general operating expenses, due this month, and another $100,000 from Chrysler due later this year.

'We've not heard that we're not getting our money,' said museum President and CEO Juanita Moore, 'so I'm praying we lucked out. But I haven't called them, to be frank, because I don't want to hear 'no.''

Representatives from the Ford Motor Co. Fund, however, have assured her that their funding for the year is secure. Ford annually underwrites the museum's Ford Freedom Awards to the tune of about $250,000. Additionally, Ford is bringing the exhibition 'Freedom Sisters' to the museum, though that's an entirely Ford-financed traveling show, so it involves no specific grants to the Wright museum.