Anthony Roth Costanzo was 14, a gifted boy soprano just beginning to form a relationship with opera, when he took part in the 1996 Luciano Pavarotti International Voice Competition, presented at the Academy of Music by the Opera Company of Philadelphia. He sang the Shepherd Boy in Act III of Puccini’s Tosca, with Pavarotti in his iconic role as Cavaradossi.
“When the show ended, Pavarotti arranged the curtain calls on the fly,” Costanzo recounted recently, in an article for Opera America Magazine. “I was standing there in my shepherd’s costume, and it seemed like I wasn’t going to get to go out there, but at the end he looked at me, stuck out his hand and took me out with him. Perhaps shrewdly, because he got a huge hand — everyone went wild. That was a very operatic experience.”
Costanzo, now 41, went on to become one of his generation’s most heralded countertenors, best known for his starring roles at The Metropolitan Opera, including Philip Glass’ Akhnaten (in a performance so persuasive that he was offered an Egyptology fellowship at Oxford). He sang the title role of John Corigliano’s The Lord Of Cries, whose album version by Boston Modern Orchestra Project won the most recent Grammy Award for Best Opera Recording.
Costanzo will step into a different sort of role on June 1, when he becomes the president and general director of Opera Philadelphia — following in the footsteps of David Devan, who announced the end of his historic 13-year tenure last year.
“Opera Philadelphia’s reputation for excellence and innovation in our sector allows for infinite possibility, and the collaborative spirit here is the kind of environment in which I thrive,” Costanzo says in the announcement. “Building on the company’s foundation of artistic success and their efforts to engage communities near and far, I am confident of an exciting future of strategic and creative growth in the years ahead.”
He is the farthest thing from a stranger to the company. Since his formative curtain call with Pavarotti on the Academy stage, he has performed in a number of Opera Philadelphia productions, including George Benjamin’s Written on Skin in 2018. He premiered the operatic art installation Glass Handel as part of the organization’s second Festival O that same year. His most recent appearance came in 2022, when he took part in a fundraising gala with Justin Vivian Bond, drawing from their album Only an Octave Apart.
The new appointment came after a search that yielded nearly 40 prospective candidates for the position. “Anthony Roth Costanzo is one of the most gifted and intelligent artists to ever perform with Opera Philadelphia, and he is the ideal choice to lead the company as we enter our upcoming 50th season,” Corrado Rovaris, the company’s music director and a member of the search committee, attests in a press statement. “I look forward to partnering with Anthony and the talented staff and artists who make Opera Philadelphia such a special and vital place.”
Stephen K. Klasko, chair of Opera Philadelphia’s board, echoes the encomium, adding: “It is unprecedented for an opera singer in the prime of his performing career to take on this type of CEO role at a major opera company. He will set a new paradigm for our industry as a working artist running the business side of an organization.”
Costanzo is indeed still in his prime on the operatic stage: he just made his Paris Opera debut in Thomas Adès’ The Exterminating Angel, and he will star as Orfeo in Orfeo ed Eurydiceat The Met Opera starting next month. This summer he will perform in the premiere of a George Lewis opera, The Comet / Poppea, at the Geffen Contemporary at MOCA in Los Angeles. (He served as a producer of that work, along with Cath Brittan, The Industry, American Modern Opera Company, the Curtis Institute of Music, and Yale Schwarzman Center.)
In the face of tough financial realities, Opera Philadelphia reduced its budget by 20% last year, made staff reductions, and postponed its flagship Festival O, typically held in the fall. But the company is moving forward with an aesthetically ambitious season, which kicks off in September with The Listeners, an opera by Missy Mazzoli. As Costanzo assumes the helm, he faces a challenge of sustainability as well as a set of new possibilities. He seems eager to dive in.
“Singing in operas has only been part of my journey as an artist,” he says in a statement. “I have found that perhaps the greatest impact I can have comes in what I produce, create, imagine, and what stories I can help find a voice.”
To learn more about Anthony Roth Costanzo’s appointment, visit Opera Philadelphia.
* A previous version of this story said that Anthony Roth Costanzo was 13 when he sang Tosca with Luciano Pavarotti. He was 14; a correction has been made.
