Anthony Roth Costanzo is named Opera Philadelphia’s new leader
Costanzo has been a child actor, producer, impresario, fundraiser — and has been called "the Mariah Carey of opera."
The spotlight searching for a new Opera Philadelphia leader has landed on the company’s own stage. Anthony Roth Costanzo, the highly acclaimed countertenor, impresario, and advocate for a challenged artform, will become the company’s general director and president June 1.
The choice is a somewhat unusual one. Opera companies are typically led by career administrators — or perhaps even a former stage director, notes David Ferguson, an Opera Philadelphia board member who led the search committee.
But “to have a singer at the peak of power leading an opera company and the business side of things is probably unprecedented in recent memory,” Ferguson said.
“He is someone who blew us away with how he is thinking about the future of the artform and just what it will take to not only sustain us, but to allow us to really thrive in the coming years, which is what we are all in search of.”
“Great choice,” said Metropolitan Opera general manager Peter Gelb, speaking on a day this week when Costanzo was at the Met rehearsing for an upcoming production of Gluck’s Orfeo ed Euridice.
Costanzo, he said, “has a remarkable entrepreneurial sensibility that’s been demonstrated through all the various projects he has initiated. I’ve never met an opera singer who has as much going on as he does. He seems to be everywhere at the same time, in a good way.”
Said Gelb: “Who knows, maybe we’ll collaborate on something.”
Costanzo, 41, has developed an international career at a time when countertenors — a male singing in a falsetto voice — have come into vogue. He’s sung high-profile roles at the Metropolitan Opera, Paris Opera, Lyric Opera of Chicago, Glyndebourne and Santa Fe, and in several Opera Philadelphia productions. In 2018, he led a multi-genre creation called Glass Handel at the Barnes Foundation that called for periodically lifting the chairs of listeners from one spot to another during the course of the piece.
But Costanzo has also been an unusually adept force backstage as producer, curator, and fundraiser, and it was in part the ability to consolidate all of these roles in one job that appealed to him.
“It is in some ways, obviously, a change in direction, but my entire career has been built upon producing, and so it feels like I’ve been doing this a long time,” Costanzo said.
“A lot of people have said to me, ‘Oh, you’re an artist coming into this role. I’m sure you have so many ideas about programming and singers and directors,’ and of course, those all circle in my head. But when I get down to the nuts and bolts of what I’m gonna start with, it’s fundraising.”
His track record here is impressive. He not only performed in Glass Handel, but also conceived of it, raised the money, and developed collaborations with Raf Simons, Justin Peck, Tilda Swinton, and others. He created, produced, and helped raise funds for Bandwagon, a program with the New York Philharmonic that brought short chamber music concerts to the boroughs.
Over the past 20 years, he has raised almost $9 million in support of producing and commissioning new work, his résumé says.
“Fundraising is something I love,” Costanzo said.
Setting the right course for the company is “about relationships, and I’m a real people person. And it’s about vision. And I think that’s the crucial thing that we need to do in Opera Philadelphia first is establish a clear vision which is going to excite new patrons and reinvigorate family members who have been with us for a long time.”
Costanzo may be an established figure in opera, but he has often performed outside of the genre. He’s done music theater, sang backup to the Olsen twins and Michael Jackson, and, in 1998, appeared in the James Ivory film A Soldier’s Daughter Never Cries. More recently, he had a role in a 2022 commercial introducing the purple M&M, the “spokescandy” representing acceptance and inclusivity.
The fact that he had a countertenor voice turned out to be a surprise to the commercial’s production team, so he demonstrated for them.
“They went, ‘Oh my God, you’re like the Mariah Carey of opera,’” he said.
“Just be yourself …” Costanzo says in the commercial to a self-doubting purple M&M before the confection’s debut. And then he sings in full-bloom Opera Soprano mode: “ … and you can do it!”
“Slight of build and vivacious of manner,” as a New Yorker vignette a decade ago described him, Costanzo was born in Durham, N.C. — the son of two psychology professors. By age 11 he was appearing in Broadway productions. At 14, he had an early brush with Philadelphia, singing the part of the Shepherd Boy in a scene from Tosca in Pavarotti’s Opera Extravaganza at the Academy of Music, with Pavarotti himself as Cavaradossi.
He earned a bachelor’s degree in music from Princeton University and a master’s from the Manhattan School of Music.
Fate handed him a lesson in how precarious a singer’s career is when, in his mid-20s, he was diagnosed with thyroid cancer — the surgeries for which carried the risk of cutting into the vocal nerves. His voice emerged unharmed.
Costanzo assumes the leadership seat at a fraught time. Attendance at most arts groups is still in a post-pandemic slump. After a period of growth and innovation, Opera Philadelphia has cut staff, productions, and the budget, and is reevaluating its signature event, the annual Festival O.
It was in this financial climate that David B. Devan, the opera company’s leader since 2011, announced in August that he would be stepping down.
Devan’s tenure had several hallmarks: experimentation with novel venues and concert formats, conducting and responding to sophisticated market research on audience behavior, commissioning new works, and building buzz and a network of supporters.
Innovation has been the ethos at the company for more than a decade. What will the Costanzo era look like?
“I really look forward to getting under the hood,” he says, “but I think it goes without saying that as a countertenor, I’m really committed to new works. That’s been at least half or more of my career.
“The other thing that’s interesting a bit about being a countertenor is, I am steeped in the very foundations of opera, the beginnings of opera, the tradition of beautiful singing and bel canto in terms of the vocal technique, not the period. Having and maintaining that tradition will be really important to me. So I think that there will definitely be a balance between those things, and I have no intention of getting rid of old works or traditional works or canonical works.”
One thing he’d like to see more of is collaborations.
“The idea of strategic partnerships and collaboration both inside and outside the field are a way to broaden the scope of Opera Philadelphia and to create projects which push opera outside of its current boundaries and outside of the walls of the opera house.”
That could help “develop an audience and supporters who then can come into the opera house with a different point of access and enjoy it in a new and exciting way. How are we collaborating with technology, with universities, with all different organizations and institutions that can help to broaden our scope?”
Costanzo’s initial contract with Opera Philadelphia is for three years. He plans to establish a home in Philadelphia, but since he will continue to perform, he will lead the life that many opera singers do.
“Opera singers don’t live anywhere. We’re nomads.” The connections he makes elsewhere will pay dividends in Philadelphia, he promises.
“The excitement about traveling around is that I meet a network of collaborators, of patrons, of institutions and organizations that I can sort of rope into Philadelphia.”