Beyond the Storm, a New York City Opera Thrives

When I heard that one of my favorite works, The Tempest, would be interpreted by Teatro Grattacielo, I was elated.  The company, based in NYC since 1994, sought to create a production where a film director, unable to control his world, loses himself in madness.  Raised with auteurs in the experimental theater world, I yearned to interpret Prospero on the edge.

Then, on Saturday, July 18th, after two days of orange haze from Canadian wildfires enveloped New York City again, flash flood warnings were announced.  Unbelievable!  That day, I aimed to view a production of The Tempest through a difficult flood.  Prepared to pique an interest in the larger “theater is life” argument, I got my notebook ready.  The hours passed.  I sought to leave my apartment, and my transit app reported possible subway interruption.  Ugh!  Cancel culture, after three days of extraordinary weather, somehow won the play card again.  Why hadn’t I seen the opera on opening night on Thursday?  I changed course, still determined to cover Teatro Grattacielo in the East Village.

Teatro Grattacielo’s The Tempest. Jordan Rutter-Covatto as Trinculo and Eliam Ramos as Stephanos. At back, Benjamin Sieverding as Caliban. Photo credit: Jennifer Katzman.

So, for the Sunday, July 19th’s performance of Così Fan Tutte, I anticipated a multi-cultural cast and native Italian speakers nearby. Truth be told, living in Italy at several points in my life, only increased my love of the opera, first discovered many years earlier, by a teacher who was a soloist at NYC’s Metropolitan Opera.  After attending NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, I consciously embraced rock opera, contemporary music theater, poetic drama, and experimental performance art, all genres championed by La MaMa ETC, the theater center across the street from NYTW, where the musical, Rent, was first developed.

I passed the stilt walker on E. 4th to enter the door at the La MaMa, feeling quite at home appreciating the opera worlds that seem to persist through all circumstances.  Taking from the past to jet into the future, Così Fan Tutte is one of Mozart’s most famous works.  Teatro Grattacielo spun the audience perspective – placing their players on the high risers and viewers in a traditional performance space to look up at a Bauhaus style of the set.  While no circus acts were featured, Cupid, perhaps, an alter ego of a Director, playfully scampered up and down the aisles, speaking into a microphone in English, framing and deciphering the action before each scene, sung in Italian.  Under wings of an angel with no threat of darkness, Cupid presented a light, pink heart, giving courage to a production that freely displayed women passing around their boyfriends and young men behaving badly.  The spirit of the production was courteous and generous, exactly, perhaps, what Mozart intended, when he first presented Così Fan Tutte in Vienna in 1790.

Così Fan Tutte, meaning Thus, do all (women), played forward.  With supertitles in English, it was greatly comprehensible, and performed by a multi-cultural cast, including Asian singers and a Mexican conductor, Abdiel Vázquez. Energetic and exacting, Vazquez also played keyboard, bringing out the dynamics of the work.  The performers, dressed in their slick, fashionable best, provided by Costume Designer Anabel Simotas, brought simple elegance and sensitive awareness to the foibles and desires of young men and women.  Even, when the men get drunk on magic elixir at the end of Act One, the comedic material was treated so lightly, with the doctor with the remedy solving the problem effortlessly.

Featuring Cate Pisaroni as Cupid and Abdiel Vázquez, Conductor. Cate Pisaroni is also the Director of Teatro Grattacielo’s Così Fan Tutte. Photo credit: Jennifer Katzman.

Just before Act Two, Cate Pisaroni as Cupid announced from the stage that the World Cup is playing on, and the score is 0 -0. It  was a reminder that we may encounter so many live moments  performed in real time, in exactly in one day.  Undeterred by the whirlwind of soccer enthusiasm occuring nearby simultaneously, Teatro Grattacielo presented Guglielmo, Fiordiligi, Despina, and Dorabella, playing on through Act Two, with memorable songs like   “Ah, che no si dica”  and “Prenderò quel brunettino” winning the moment.  With Cate Pisaroni’s direction of Così Fan Tutte, love is won, love is shared, and under the wings of an angel, great music wins and conquers all!

Thank you, Teatro Grattacielo!  Within one week in July, your singers presented a storm, rose up past a storm, and made it all the way through a 2026 Summer cycle of production.  They say, to build an opera community, it takes a village, and your intelligent, generous presentation spinning out in two languages to a packed house, didn’t fail to inspire native New Yorkers and opera fans braving it through one more day.

Così Fan Tutte closed on Sunday, July 19th at the Ellen Stewart Theater at La MaMa, located on 66 E. 4th Street in NYC.  Teatro Grattacielo’s calendar of performances is featured on their website, grattacielo.org.