Countertenor Anthony Roth Costanzo began performing professionally at the age of 11 and has since appeared in opera, concert, recital, film, and on Broadway. 

 

Recently named 2019 Musical America Vocalist of the Year, this season Mr. Costanzo returns to the Met as the title role in Akhnaten (which will be broadcast live to movie theaters around the world as part of the Met Opera’s Live in HD series), stars in the critically acclaimed production of Aci, Galatea e Polifemo in San Francisco with Philharmonia Baroque which he originally produced for National Sawdust in 2017, and appears in recital at the Phillips Collection in Washington DC and in concert with Les Violons du Roy and with The English Concert on tour in both Europe and the US.

 

Mr. Costanzo is an exclusive recording artist with Decca Gold, and his first album, ARC - a collection of arias by Handel and Phillip Glass with Les Violons du Roy – was released in September 2018 and nominated for the 2019 GRAMMY Award for Best Classical Solo Vocal Album. With the album, he produced the multi-disciplinary performance installation Glass Handel, involving artists like Tilda Swinton, George Condo, and Raf Simons, and creating 9 music videos which were released as a visual album on Apple Music."

 

Costanzo has appeared with many of the world’s leading opera houses including the Metropolitan Opera, Lyric Opera of Chicago, San Francisco Opera, English National Opera, Houston Grand Opera, Opera Philadelphia, Los Angeles Opera, Canadian Opera Company, Glyndebourne Opera Festival, Dallas Opera, Teatro Real Madrid, Spoleto Festival USA, Glimmerglass Festival, and Finnish National Opera.

 

In concert he has sung with the New York Philharmonic, The Cleveland Orchestra, National Symphony Orchestra, San Francisco Symphony, Boston Baroque, Berlin Philharmonic, NDR at the Elbphilharmonie in Hamburg, and the London Symphony Orchestra, among others. He has also been presented in recital in Vancouver, Princeton University Concerts, Duke Performances, and at the Morgan Library in New York. He has performed at a wide-ranging variety of venues including Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, Versailles, The Kennedy Center, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, National Sawdust, Minamiza Kyoto, Joe’s Pub, The Guggenheim, The Park Avenue Armory, and Madison Square Garden.

 

A champion of new work, Mr. Costanzo recently created roles in the world premieres of Jimmy Lopez' Bel Canto at the Lyric Opera of Chicago and Jake Heggie's Great Scott at the Dallas Opera. He has also premiered works written for him by Matthew Aucoin, Paola Prestini, Gregory Spears, Suzanne Farrin, Bernard Rands, Scott Wheeler, Mohammed Fairouz, Steve Mackey, and Nico Muhly.

 

Mr. Costanzo has begun working as a producer and curator in addition to being a performer, most recently producing and starring in Glass Handel at Opera Philadelphia’s O18 Festival and subsequently co-presented by National Sawdust and St. John the Divine in New York.  He has also created shows for National Sawdust, Opera Philadelphia, the Philharmonia Baroque, Princeton University, WQXR, The State Theater in Salzburg, Master Voices and Kabuki-Za Tokyo. He played Francis in the Merchant Ivory film, A Soldier’s Daughter Never Cries, for which he was nominated for an Independent Spirit Award, and Simon in Brice Cauvin’s De particulier a particulier. He is the first countertenor to host a Met Opera Live in HD Broadcast.

 

In 2012, Mr. Costanzo won first place in Placido Domingo’s international competition Operalia. He is also a 2009 Grand Finals Winner of the Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions. He won a George London Award, received a career grant from the Richard Tucker Foundation, and became the first countertenor to win First Place in the Houston Grand Opera Eleanor McCullom competition, where he also won the audience choice prize. He received a Sullivan Foundation Award, and won First Place in the Opera Index Competition, the National Opera Association Vocal Competition, and the Jensen Foundation Competition.

 

Mr. Costanzo graduated Magna Cum Laude and Phi Beta Kappa from Princeton University where he was awarded the Lewis Sudler Prize for extraordinary achievement in the arts and where he has returned to teach. He received his Masters of Music at Manhattan School of Music and won the Hugh Ross Award for a singer of unusual promise. In his youth, he performed on Broadway and in Broadway National Tours including A Christmas Carol, The Sound of Music, and Falsettos. He began his operatic endeavors playing Miles in The Turn of the Screw.

 

August 2019

Photo credit: Matthew Placek.