Longform
Can one of the world’s best countertenors and the new head of Opera Philadelphia leverage his A-list global connections to make opera here not just viable but … exciting?
Anthony Roth Costanzo, the new head of Opera Philadelphia / Photograph by Gene Smirnov
“Of course, entering fully naked in Akhnaten was very nerve-racking,” says Anthony Roth Costanzo when I ask about his most terrifying performance moment. As one of the opera world’s leading countertenors (a man who sings in a typically female register), he has made the portrayal of the Egyptian pharaoh’s short, provocative life in the transcendent Philip Glass opera his signature role. But Costanzo mastered the fear of baring it all in front of 3,800 patrons, plus musicians and those union guys in the wings. In fact, for Costanzo, descending a staircase wearing only some glitter oil for four glacially paced minutes was liberating and ultimately a quite powerful way to control an audience.
“The first time I did that role in London, I remember being terrified,” he recalls of that moment in 2016. (Costanzo has more recently performed Akhnaten at New York’s Metropolitan Opera in 2019 and 2022; the recording of the latter won a Grammy.) He shrugs now at the memory, as you’d expect of a seasoned pro who’s performed for more than 30 years on the top world stages. Despite any undercurrents of trepidation, Costanzo was brilliant and the critics raved. Audience members get a bit rapturous over this particular opera. As someone who saw Costanzo perform the role in 2022, I, too, felt its mesmerizing profundity.
For anyone familiar with Costanzo, this anecdote is just another example of the remarkably driven countertenor mastering the moment. His expansive résumé testifies to his knack for taking calculated risks — whether in his career or in pushing opera to be more innovative. It’s a quality that should suit him quite well in his latest role, one notably not on stage: In April it was announced that he would take over this June as the new general director of Opera Philadelphia.
Since most music suited to his vocal range was written before 1750 or after 1950, says Costanzo, he was keenly aware of the possibility of being relegated to opera’s fringes. That twist of vocal fate has led him into the role of impresario, pushing to create projects for his voice and others. It may also have put him in the perfect position to direct his beloved opera world forward. That voice has made him an outsider within his own art form, so he knows precisely where he needs to disrupt opera to make it work for today’s audiences. Costanzo is a rare blend of artistic star power and equally starry connections, entrepreneurial intuition, and business savvy. He’s just the sort of triple threat who could bring opera in Philadelphia out of what’s been looking like a death spiral.
•
Costanzo got his start as a Durham, North Carolina, vocal prodigy. His parents, psychology professors at Duke, let him “take Manhattan” as a preteen when, at age 11, he won a part in the Broadway national tour of Falsettos. The role launched his professional career and led to his singing at 14 with Luciano Pavarotti in Tosca at the Academy of Music. When he was 16, Costanzo acted in the 1998 Merchant Ivory film A Soldier’s Daughter Never Cries, playing an awkward, opera-obsessed teen. Go figure.
Fast forward to 2023 and the countertenor opens the rom-com She Came to Me (with Anne Hathaway, Marisa Tomei and Peter Dinklage) singing an aria from Carmen at a fundraiser. It’s right on message for an art form that can’t exist without philanthropy. Raising money, the essential skill of nonprofit arts, is something Costanzo also started doing early. For his senior thesis project at Princeton, he created a stage production about an 18th-century castrato, for which he raised $35,000 from academic departments — and then later got the university to pony up more than $100,000 to fund a documentary about his show.
Costanzo is an unexpected but inspired choice to reinvigorate Opera Philadelphia, replacing the beloved David Devan, who retired at the end of this season after 13 years at the helm. Devan won industry praise for his remarkable rebranding of the company — he transformed it from a dowdy producer of operatic warhorses into an innovative, artist-centered leader of experimentation. Under Devan’s care, OP created new work and fostered attention-getting artistic collaborations; the company created 18 new operas during his tenure (notably Breaking the Waves, We Shall Not Be Moved, Sky on Swings and Denis & Katya). But the enthusiasm and acclaim these works garnered may not have generated the commensurate philanthropy to pay for this stream of pricey inventions. COVID also wreaked havoc on many arts organizations’ business models. Before COVID, the company’s budget was as large as $17.9 million in 2017, while this coming season’s budget has slimmed down to $10 million.
Opera around the country is still reeling from the pandemic. Audiences haven’t returned, the subscription model no longer works, philanthropy withered or goes to different causes, and production costs are rising. Regional opera companies have felt all of these pressures. In 2023, Maryland Lyric Opera folded, Syracuse Opera canceled the remainder of its season, and San Diego Opera reduced performances. Opera Philadelphia worrisomely has gone from 30 performances in the 2018–’19 season to 17 this past season, and down to an anemic nine this coming year. According to the Center City District’s 2024 State of Center City report, Opera Philadelphia saw a 73 percent increase in audiences last year but remains at just 45 percent of its pre-COVID draw. That’s a promising trend, but still concerning. “We hit a low point,” admits OP board member Charles Freyer. “But we are coming back with more productions and performances in fiscal year 2025. We are not going to get any smaller. We are in ‘build back better’ mode.” OP kicks off the season next month with the U.S. premiere of Missy Mazzoli and Royce Vavrek’s The Listeners, about a group of people living in the American Southwest who begin to hear a mysterious hum.
Opera Philadelphia should benefit from the fresh pool of donors Costanzo can access. Freyer, who is chair of the board’s planned giving committee, reports that many regular donors waited to give this year, eager to see who Devan’s successor would be. “Since Anthony has been announced,” says Freyer, “there’s been a dramatic upsurge in interest and in giving.” Costanzo’s universe of potential high-profile supporters from across the globe and industries is essential to recovery. Opera Philadelphia is going to need to rebrand itself under Costanzo’s imprint to create buzz and partnerships that will bring in those all-important philanthropic donations. Ticket sales pay only about 20 percent of costs to run an opera company. The rest of the budget needs to come from donations. Freyer describes how Costanzo will court his individual patrons and go after the corporate sector. According to Freyer, “We’ve never effectively gone after the corporate donor, and that’s certainly a part of his development strategy.”
As the diminutive 42-year-old sits in a director’s chair at the dining room table of his sleek prewar Chelsea apartment, he shares with me his plans to balance his singing career with his new challenge at the helm of OP. He projects easy competence and feline composure as he moves through the day’s packed schedule of commitments, including Opera Philadelphia video calls to sort out programming, fundraising and meeting logistics. Before he leaves to pedal to the Met tonight — 13 minutes uptown via bike share — for his evening performance singing the title role in Christoph Gluck’s Orfeo ed Euridice, he describes his summer schedule: Orfeo at the Met; the world premiere he’s producing of The Comet/Poppea at Los Angeles’s Museum of Contemporary Art; the world premiere of The Righteous at the Santa Fe Opera Festival; and then to New York’s Little Island Festival for the world premiere of his new version of The Marriage of Figaro, in which he sings all the parts. It’s a lot.
•
To ask it bluntly, does Costanzo have enough time for Opera Philadelphia? Peter Gelb, who is in charge of the massive Metropolitan Opera, tells me by phone that he was warned when he first took the job at the Met: “You have to realize that you can never leave. So many things can go wrong at the opera, and they do. My original contract, and I’m approaching my 19th year, has a clause that says that I have to be available to the Met 24/7.”
Yet, Gelb adds, “It takes a certain amount of courage to run an opera company, the same way it does to be a singer naked on stage in Akhnaten, and if there’s an operatic equivalent to having the ‘right stuff,’ Anthony has it. Most singers don’t have qualifications to run an opera company, but Anthony does.” Though Gelb and the Met are in the midst of their own financial struggles — Gelb twice dipped into the endowment post-pandemic — it is still an endorsement that should reassure the board of Opera Philadelphia, which took a chance on an elite performer with no previous senior administration leadership experience in an arts organization.
Though Philly’s opera is midsize and a fraction of the scope of the Met, being able to hold down two full-time jobs — he’ll continue to perform while leading OP — is possible for only a rare few. “It’s a risk, right?” concedes Costanzo. “But part of what Opera Philadelphia has been good at in its past is taking risks that can pay off in terms of innovation, and in particular artistically. The gamble here is that I’m an artist, and never before has an artist in the prime of their career been selected to also run an opera company.” Will the potential for divided attention be a liability for Costanzo? He doesn’t think so. “I feel confident about all of the experience I’ve had and how that translates into leadership within an institution,” he says. Two years ago, Costanzo told the New York Times: “I am an artist first, but my brain exists in a world of engagement, marketing, education, press, leadership, fundraising, collaboration, curation.”
“We did meet with a number of highly experienced and talented candidates with both symphonic and opera management backgrounds,” says Freyer. “All could have done the job, but Anthony is special. He’s very charismatic. We just thought putting him in the general director chair would emphasize to artists around the country and the world that we really value the artist.”
•
When I arrive at the Met’s stage door an hour before curtain for the night’s performance of Orfeo, I sign in and am escorted down fluorescently lit hallways to Costanzo’s door. I can hear him warming up before I enter the room. He’s mostly dressed in his Isaac Mizrahi-designed costume.
He’s very comfortable having me visit and observe his process. Marian Torre, his makeup artist for 13 years, coos over his eyebrows. “They’re very expressive,” she approves, adding how important they are to convey emotion. Costanzo introduces me to the conductor, J. David Jackson, who, still in khakis and a polo shirt, drops by to go over a few music-related things. Costanzo quickly eats some forkfuls of his dinner. Famed dancer and choreographer Mark Morris bounds in with affection and soon exits with some tart best wishes: “Have a good show and don’t fuck everything up!” — which may be more about keeping out of the way of Morris’s choreography for the opera. Costanzo, the un-diva, is kind to all and prepares calmly for curtain time. I leave him when I hear the 30-minutes-till-curtain call that’s broadcast into the dressing rooms.
Costanzo’s track record went a long way to allay the concerns of the OP board’s search committee. Plus, he’s no stranger to the company: Most recently, he hosted the company’s 2022 fundraising concert, Only an Octave Apart, with Justin Vivian Bond, based on their album of the same name. And after Costanzo’s 2018 Grammy-nominated debut solo album Glass/Handel dropped, Devan invited him to create something new for the company’s 2018 Festival O. Costanzo raised $1 million to produce Glass Handel, and audiences responded to its unorthodox opera “experience.” It was performed at the Barnes Foundation, and Costanzo enlisted a bevy of art-star friends to collaborate, including designer Raf Simons, ballet dancer and choreographer Justin Peck, artist George Condo, filmmaker James Ivory, and actress Tilda Swinton. As Costanzo sang music by both Philip Glass and George Frideric Handel, audience members, their chairs on dollies, were literally moved around the space. Costanzo enjoyed the democratizing aspect of patrons being shuttled from station to station of the interdisciplinary installation so wealthier people didn’t necessarily have better views, at least not for long. Costanzo got the idea for the mobile concert while riding through London on his bike listening to Glass. “I realized that music in motion was really incredible,” he says in a 2020 video for PBS’s Box Burners program.
Part of what is needed is a new vision. How do we embroider tradition in a way that makes sense for now?” — Anthony Roth Costanzo
So if you’re weary of interminable stand-and-deliver operas, you’re in luck. Costanzo is ready to continue the innovative work that’s become the calling card of Opera Philadelphia, and now promises to take it to even more glamorous, unexpected heights, venues and mash-ups. Collaboration is Costanzo’s anthem. He uses the word numerous times throughout our conversation. During the pandemic he spearheaded and produced an event called Bandwagon, which was a New York Philharmonic program that put musicians on a truck and drove them around the boroughs of NYC for pop-up chamber music concerts. He also received more than $500,000 in funding from the Mellon Foundation for his work incubating and mentoring artists and their creative practices.
The Met’s general manager has known Costanzo since 2009, when he won the Opera’s National Council Auditions, and admires the singer’s entrepreneurial spirit. “He was always thinking of new ways of presenting performances,” says Gelb. “In a way, he’s been training for this, maybe not deliberately, but working towards having a position that would survive his singing career.” Costanzo was diagnosed with thyroid cancer 12 years ago. Though he’d been thinking about presenting opera long before that, the gravity of cancer (and the risk to his voice from the surgery) forced him to reexamine what matters to him. He says it reinforced his commitment to connect the uninitiated to the arts.
This brings to mind a 2013 visit Costanzo made to sixth-graders in the Bronx to educate them about opera. In the video from the visit, the energy is loose and fun. He asks the kids what they know about opera, and one smiling boy mentions a big woman in a Viking helmet. Costanzo then leads them through an exercise about emotions and how opera conveys them through music. After a bit, he demonstrates by singing “Pena Tiranna” from Handel’s Amadigi di Gaula. Initially, the students squirm and are embarrassed by this raw emotion. But soon, they are hooked. By the song’s end, one girl is wiping away tears. Costanzo respects them and the moment enough to treat them as seriously as he would a room full of longtime opera cognoscenti. The contrast between the ethereal beauty of this aria and the unremarkable classroom somehow sharpens the lesson about the power of arts to enrich our lives.
Those seeking a taste of his daring productions and to hear him perform should see The Comet/Poppea, one of Costanzo’s latest projects — in partnership with the American Modern Opera Company and the Curtis Institute — making its East Coast debut in November at Center City’s 23rd Street Armory. Two stories, W.E.B. Du Bois’s 1920 proto-Afrofuturist sci-fi story The Comet and Claudio Monteverdi’s 1643 political potboiler L’incoronazione di Poppea, are presented on two halves of a rotating set to create “a visual and sonic spiral for audiences.” It could be a hot mess or triumphantly awesome. But it’s a risk worth taking when you have the guardrails of blue-chip collaborators, including composer George Lewis and director Yuval Sharon (both MacArthur “Genius Grant” winners.)
Costanzo says he’s noticed that when companies have trouble selling tickets and raising money, they opt for safe, familiar work. “But the standard-issue stuff often doesn’t sell,” he says. “You have to take the risk and be ready to fail. The one thing that succeeds — or the many — those will build your reputation much more quickly than a conservative choice that sells 70 percent of the tickets.” He hopes his bravura will pay off for OP. “I’m not coming in to disrupt a perfect situation that is operating beautifully,” Costanzo says. “There are problems to solve. And I’m a problem solver first and foremost.”
Costanzo’s drive to preach opera’s worth and relatability may be his strongest asset in reviving Opera Philadelphia. “Part of what is needed is a new vision,” says Costanzo, not only for new works but for new treatments of old works. “How do we embroider tradition in a way that makes sense for now? I’m talking about engagement that includes education, marketing and digital work.” He wants to offer smart ways to connect with this grande dame of an art form that are welcoming and fun. He’s savvy enough to add, “To be clear, this is stuff that Philadelphia is already doing really well, but I want to amplify it.”
•
Reading the Playbill before the curtain goes up at the Met’s Orfeo, I spot a Q&A with our countertenor. In it, he is asked to describe a favorite moment in the opera. Costanzo says it’s when Orfeo is pleading with the Furies to allow him to enter the underworld: “Orfeo is trying to use his music to sway people who aren’t interested, and my mission in life is not only to try to sing opera, but to bring all kinds of new audiences to the art form.”
For some 400 years, opera has been a story-based multimedia art form. Opera has been doing for years what audiences are clamoring for these days — immersive, experiential stories that connect and express the most basic parts of our human heart: joy, sorrow, jealousy, love, passion. Peter Gelb believes the onus is on the people running opera companies to make opera matter to the wider populace. “The danger is it doesn’t matter, and if we don’t disrupt the art form in a positive way it won’t matter,” says Gelb. “That’s what I believe Anthony will do in Philadelphia. It’s what he’s been doing all his career.”
Published as “High Notes” in the August 2024 issue of Philadelphia magazine.
