The Best Little Opera House in the Bowery

Christopher Fecteau talks about life at the Amato Opera.

Christopher Fecteau, leader of dell'Arte Opera Ensemble.
Photo by Carl M. Jenks for CarlMJenksPhotography.com

The death of impresario Anthony Amato has sent repercussions through the operatic world of New York City. Conductor Christopher Fecteau leads the dell'Arte Opera Ensemble, which draws some of the same audience. At the request of Superconductor, Mr. Fecteau shared some memories of the fiery conductor and life at the little opera house on the Bowery.

"I spent most of three seasons as an assistant conductor and then associate music director at Amato." During that time, Mr. Fecteau conducted more than a dozen staples of the repertoire. "My first performance as a conductor there was Madama Butterfly. I had conducted three full staging rehearsals (no time with the orchestra--the orchestra never rehearsed.)  When I got to the theater for that particular Sunday matinee, I met the four principals backstage--only one of which I had rehearsed with. That's just the way it was done."

"As one might expect," he continues, "there were some nights that were magic, and others that were just maddening. Tony was a tough taskmaster. There was really only one way to do things: his way." He adds: "I slowly--and stubbornly--learned that his way was actually quite a fine way to do things. The consistency of that single-mindedness was oart if the glue that held productions together."

The Amato Opera after it closed in 2009.
The building is listed at being worth $6.95 million.
Photo by Michael Maren.

According to Mr. Fecteau, an opera production could have six casts, three or four different conductors, a handful of different pianists and a chamber orchestra made up of faces that were always changing. The company had over 60 operas in its repertory during its run at 319 Bowery. The theater had only 107 seats. At one performance of Umberto Giordano's Andrea Chenier, James Levine was spotted in the audience.

"It was impossible not to learn there," he says. "In addition to Tony, my teachers were the numerous dedicated singers in principal roles on down through the chorus Plus, the pianists, orchestra musicians and people like Irene Kim, who managed to keep that strange big-little machine running."

Mr. Fecteau explains that the most direct inheritor of the Amato 'mantle' is Amore Opera. Amore, he says "inherited most of the costume and set stock of the 60-year-old company." Following in the footsteps of Amato and playing in small spaces in lower Manhattan, the Amore Opera just presented the New York stage premiere of I Due Figaro a non-Beaumarchais operatic sequel to The Barber of Seville and The Marriage of Figaro.

"The biggest lessons I learned, however, were not musical, but personal," he says. "Loyalty was Tony's absolute strongest suit.  If you were good to him, to the company, to the people around him, he was good to you. In the long run, I no longer fit in at Amato, and Tony gave me a somewhat ungraceful shove out the door. I thank him for that, because it would have been difficult for me to leave that magical place in any other way."

Obituary: Anthony Amato (1920-2011)

Founder of the Amato Opera dies at 91.

Anthony Amato (left) in a 1948 staging of Il Barbiere di Siviglia.

Photo from the Amato archives © 1948 Amato Opera Company.

Anthony Amato, the founder of the Amato Opera Company, an East Village institution that provided opportunities for many young singers in its 50-year career, died today. He was 91.

For half a century, Mr. Amato and his wife, Sally, were key players in the New York opera community, staging great works by Rossini, Verdi, Puccini and others on a shoe-string budget. Their home was the tiny Amato Opera House, located at 319 Bowery right next to the site of the rock club CBGB. 

The Amato Opera opened in 1948 with a hasty production of Rossini's Il Barbiere di Siviglia at Our Lady of Pompeii Church in the West Village. There was no scenic artist, so the sets were hastily improvised. In the following week, they followed with the famous double bill of Cavalleria Rusticana and Pagliacci. 

Over the next decade, the tiny opera troupe moved around the city, before settling at 319 Bowery in 1964. Once settled, Mr. Amato developed a great reputation for dependable repertory and the occasional rarity. They also staged several important New York premieres, including Nerone, the unfinished second opera by composer Arrigo Boito.

The shoebox opera house on the Bowery was a fertile ground for young singers, some of whom went on to international careers. It was also a place to see opera for less than the glitzy Lincoln Center houses, performed with a minimal orchestra, often on a shoe-string budget. Costume changes were done on the fly, often in the gas station lot next to the stage door.

Sally Amato was a frequent player upon its stage, singing the title role in Tosca under the name Serafina Bellantoni. She also acted as ticket taker, lighting designer, costumier and publicity officer. died in 2000. However, the opera company soldiered on until Mr. Amato announced its closing in January of 2009. Its last performance was Le Nozze di Figaro on May 31, 2009.

Since the closure of the Amato Opera, its place in New York's culture as the working man's opera company has been taken by smaller theaters: the Amore Opera (run by former Amato singers and board members) and the Dell'Arte Opera Ensemble, which mounts budget black-box productions of works like Anna Bolena and Ariadne auf Naxos. Another small company, Opera Manhattan, recently announced a holiday production of Hansel & Gretel in direct, inadvertent competition with the big-budget staging mounted at the Met. 

Mr. Amato is gone, but, like Mozart's Commendatore, his presence lingers.