Dicapo Opera Theatre

About Dicapo Opera Theatre

After the Metropolitan Opera and New York City Opera, Dicapo Opera Theatre is the only opera company in New York to present an entire season of opera productions, musical theatre, concerts, family fare, and other events, and it does so in a gem of a facility tucked away on the Upper East Side.

For the 2009-10 season Dicapo mounts a new production of Tobias Picker's Emmeline; the New York premiere of Thomas Pasatieri's The Hotel Casablanca; the world premiere of Il Caso Mortara by Francesco Cilluffo; the American premiere of Donizetti's Requiem, and a concert entitled "Italian-American Composers of the 20th Century," which will feature music from Thomas Pasatieri, Gian-Carlo Menotti, Norman Dello Joio, Mark Adamo, and Vittorio Giannini. Other productions include Verdi's Rigoletto; and Puccini's Madama Butterfly in the Brescia version.

Although Dicapo's early productions were presented in the raw space of St. Jean Baptiste Church basement on East 76th Street, this area was renovated in 1995 under the supervision of General Director Michael Capasso (and with financial contributions from the City and State of New York), and transformed into a jewel box of an opera house that bore no resemblance to the original space. The theatre features 204 burgundy velvet seats, luxurious carpeting, ebonized oak walls, brass railings, ample wing space, a stage with sprung wood floor, and 38-foot adjustable proscenium, private dressing rooms, box office, bar, commodious lobby areas, quiet air conditioning, computerized lighting, and a state-of-the-art supertitle system. The result has been a superbly elegant opera house rivaling many mightier organizations and offering a degree of intimacy not possible in larger venues.

Not to say space is everything. The high artistic level of Dicapo's productions has invariably taken critics by surprise and given rise to a serious and loyal following of connoisseurs and opera aficionados. In 2007 Tobias Picker, renowned composer of Emmeline and An American Tragedy, who has been described by The Wall Street Journal as "our finest composer for the lyric stage," was appointed to the newly created post of Artistic Advisor, a position he occupied for three seasons at Dicapo, completing his tenure in March 2010. Co-founded in 1981 by Mr. Capasso and Diane Martindale, Dicapo performs repertoire that runs the gamut from crowd-pleasing traditional repertoire to rarely-heard operas and at least one contemporary work each season.

A highlight of Dicapo's 2008-09 season was its presentation of the American premiere of Leos Janácek's early opera Sárka, which was reviewed by Vivien Schweitzer in The New York Times: "An effective staging... There are several beautiful choral numbers in Sárka, and both male and female choruses were effectively deployed in Walter Sutcliff's deft staging. Oliver Gooch conducted a lively reading of the vividly orchestrated score. The main feature of John Farrell's spare and intelligently conceived set was a scrim on which different images were elegantly illuminated to reflect a particular scene." (February 23, 2009)

Also during 2008-09 Dicapo Opera Theatre celebrated the 150th anniversary of Giacomo Puccini's birth with a glittering evening of Puccini arias at Lincoln Center's Rose Theater on December 22, 2008 – an event that drew the following praise from New York Times senior critic Anthony Tommasini:

...against all odds the three-hour gala turned out to be a rewarding survey of Puccini's achievement. The orchestra and chorus Dicapo typically recruits for its productions were expanded significantly for this ambitious program. And the singers who participated included major artists, like the tenor Fabio Armiliato (Daniela Dessi's husband) and the soprano Veronica Villarroel, who substituted for Ms. Dessi. Four conductors took turns at the podium: Francisco Bonnin, Pacien Mazzagatti, Victor DeRenzi and Eve Queler, who is well-known to New Yorkers. Naturally, it is hard to meet expectations in operas as beloved as "La Bohème" and "Tosca," which have long heritages of legendary performances. But the chronological format of this program put the emphasis on the music and the composer's development. The program ended the only way it possibly could have, when Ms. Villarroel brought alluring colorings and lyrical poignancy to Liu's death scene from Act III of "Turandot," the last music Puccini wrote before he died at 65 in 1924, leaving the opera's final scene incomplete. All the participants came onstage as general director Michael Capasso wheeled out a birthday cake. The audience joined the performers in saluting Puccini, his image peering from a poster hovering over the stage and looking justifiably satisfied. (December 24, 2008)

Extending its commitments internationally, in November 2008 Dicapo participated with four other international opera companies in the first annual "Opera Competition and Festival with Mezzo," which was held in cooperation with Hungary's Mezzo Television in Szeged, Hungary. Dicapo Theatre won the competition with its production of Robert Ward's The Crucible; other participants included France's Opéra de Rennes, Germany's Bremen Theater, Poland's Baltic Opera, and Hungary's Szeged National Theatre. Dicapo will also be co-producing Tobias Picker's "Fantastic Mr. Fox" with the English Touring Opera in the 2010-2011 season.

In September 2008, The New York Times prominently featured a review of Dicapo in its Metro and Arts Section pages. Assessing Dicapo's scorching production of Robert Ward's The Crucible, led by the brilliant young conductor Maestro Mazzagatti, and staged by the iconoclastic director of the Hungarian State Theatre Robert Alföldi, with costumes by his compatriot Sandor Daroczi, long-time music critic Allan Kozinn wrote:

The Dicapo Opera Theatre's spare but powerful revival of Mr. Ward's score was enough to make you nostalgic for that fleeting moment when new theatre and new opera were socially relevant and could make common cause. It remains a powerful work. Throughout, Mr. Ward's orchestration is vivid, rhythmically vital and melodically eclectic, with folkish vocal settings intertwined with a gently angular modernism. Pacien Mazzagatti's conducting mined these characteristics astutely. Robert Alföldi's production, with its minimal sets by John Farrell and Puritanically colorless costumes by Sandor Daroczi, accomplishes much with little. The singing was uniformly strong... Michael Bracegirdle was a magnificently imperious Judge Danforth. The New York Times (September 13, 2008)

To date Dicapo has offered repertoire ranging from the operatic classics by such masters as Mozart, Bellini, Donizetti, Verdi, Tchaikovsky and Puccini to the 20th century works of Menotti, Barber, Britten, and many others. The December 2008 Puccini gala marked the completion of Dicapo's ambitious Puccini cycle, which included presenting all of his operas and instrumental music.

In 1997-98 Dicapo Opera Theatre established its Resident Artist Program to assist aspiring singers to bridge the gap between their music studies and their professional careers. Resident Artists, who are in residence from September to June, perform all secondary roles, provide covers for leading roles and provide the ensemble for the main stage productions. They also perform in outreach productions, participating in masterclasses and workshops organized by Dicapo. Resident artists have performed leading and supporting roles with the Metropolitan Opera, New York City Opera, La Scala in Milan, Teatro La Fenice in Venice, the Los Angeles Opera, Washington Opera, and elsewhere. Dicapo also gave the well-received New York performance of Mr. Picker's opera Thérèse Raquin. In 2003-04, the 100th anniversary year of the premiere of Madama Butterfly, Mr. Capasso directed all three versions of the opera in one weekend, the first time such a project was ever presented. These performances drew the following praise from The New York Times: In recent years more and more opera companies have explored the composer's original intentions by staging earlier versions (Madama Butterfly) ...but no company has matched the Dicapo Opera Theatre, which offered three different 'Butterflies:' the LaScala version on Friday, the Brescia on Saturday, and the standard one on Sunday afternoon... a weekend that could easily have been a surfeit of 'Butterfly' felt more like an intense ongoing experience with old friends...

Felicitous artistic and esthetic values are consistently singled out by the media, as evidenced by the following comments from Opera Now:

The Dicapo Opera's 50th anniversary production of Carlisle Floyd's iconic American opera Susannah, directed by Michael Capasso, general director and founder, did full justice to this touching work. The opera can make its mark in the 4,000-seat Metropolitan Opera House, but the intimacy of the 204-seat Dicapo Opera Theatre made the trauma of poor Susannah... even more poignant and immediate.

The company produces reduced one-hour versions of operas for children from four years of age. In addition to the opera performances, these presentations include demonstrations from experts on how magical stage effects are achieved through lighting, sets, costumes and special effects, as well as demonstrations of how singers project their sound. Michael Capasso, Dicapo Opera Theatre's General Director, introduces the fundamentals of opera to children without resorting to oversimplification, and each of the selected scenes – sung by Dicapo's Resident Artists in costume and with sets to the accompaniment of a piano – is presented uncut. Between key events Mr. Capasso elucidates the plot, hints at the complexities of the theatre's stagecraft, and fires children's imagination with a taste of grit and magic. Following each performance the children are able to participate in a lively Question & Answer session with the cast and crew.

Founded in 1982 by Dicapo's Co-Founder Diane Martindale, the Dicapo Children's Chorus offers children who love to sing the opportunity to perform in several Dicapo Opera Theatre productions with professional directors, singers, actors and musicians. Since its founding the chorus has performed at Lincoln Center's Alice Tully Hall, The Little Orchestra Society, Merkin Hall, the Rheinman Theater at New York University, and at the Rathaus Palace in Vienna. The Chorus has also appeared on national television in the Juilliard Opera Center's production of Hansel und Gretel on "Live From Lincoln Center."

For further information please contact Hemsing Associates at 212-772-1132 or www.hemsingpr.com.

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