If no one steps in to save the company, Saturday night’s performance of Mark-Anthony Turnage’s “Anna Nicole” — about Anna Nicole Smith, the Playboy centerfold who died in 2007 — will quite likely be the final opera performed by the troupe. The company gave its inaugural performance, of Puccini’s “Tosca,” in 1944. The company’s demise would keep New York City from being among the ranks of cultural capitals like London and Berlin that are able to support more than one major opera company.

“If we don’t raise the money we will have run out of options,” George Steel, the company’s general manager and artistic director, said in a statement. “It is impossible for the company to produce opera without a way to fund it.”

The troupe had originally said only that it would cancel the remainder of the current season if it failed to raise the $7 million by Monday; it had threatened to cancel next year’s season if it failed to raise $13 million by the end of the year. But the board has decided that if it cannot raise the money needed to continue the current season, it will begin the process of filing for bankruptcy protection on Tuesday, company officials said.

Filing for bankruptcy will allow the company to prioritize its obligations to creditors as it tries to wind down its affairs. While the scope of what the troupe owes was unclear on Thursday night, one official said that its obligations included things like pension and retirement promises, leases that might have to be broken, and contracts with vendors. There were also questions about what would happen to its endowment, which the company borrowed money from several years ago.

In a nod to its populist roots, City Opera tried to get $1 million of its current fund-raising effort through an online Kickstarter campaign. But the effort failed to attract the widespread support the company had hoped for: by Thursday it had raised only $156,143 from 968 backers.