Teatro Grattacielo announces its 2022-23 Season, featuring Mozart’s Don Giovanni on June 16 & 17, 2023 at Riverside Theater and Spontini’s La Vestale starring Indra Thomas as Giulia and Tahanee Aluwihare as La Gran Vestale on October 28, 2023 at the Gerald Lynch Theater at John Jay College. For more information and to purchase tickets, visit grattacielo.org/season.
“On behalf of the Board of Directors and myself, we are excited to be bringing back to the US the historic Italian version of La Vestale, adding to yearlong celebrations of the 100th birth anniversary of Greek-American soprano Maria Callas,” said Stefanos Koroneos, General and Artistic Director, Teatro Grattacielo. “Maria was born in New York. She took her first steps around our great city. With our season, we are honoring her memory, her artistry, and her love for our great city and community. We are also happy to be presenting our production of Don Giovanni, programmed during Pride Month to add to citywide Pride celebrations.”
Mozart’s Don Giovanni
June 16 & 17, 2023 at Riverside Theater
Presented in collaboration with the Mid-Atlantic Chamber Orchestra
grattacielo.org/season/don-giovanni
With a special combination of great young singers, provocative staging and projections, Teatro Grattacielo and Camerata Bardi Vocal Academy young artists program present Mozart’s arguably greatest opera, Don Giovanni, during Pride Month. Updated as a celebration of Spanish sic-kitsch set in ’90s replete with air couches, Chanel clothes and lots of jewels, this production is a dedication to Spanish cinematographer Pedro Almodovar and Cuban Bolero singer La Lupe. On the stage will be neon bull sculptures, a five-piece couch covered with Piet Mondian fabric, and lots of gazpacho. The performers will be driven by their most inner desires and fears, living their lives in a continued state of suspension. A suspension of time. A suspension of senses. In a ’90s Spain, where food, sex and pop culture are a way of expression.
Conductor: Jason Tramm, Director: Stefanos Koroneos, Set Designer: Tasos Protopsaltou, Costume Designers: Tasos Protopsaltou & Sara Beth Pearson, Lighting Designer: Matthew Deinhart, Poster Designer: Ricardo Monge
Cast: Enes Pektas, Lucas Bouk, and Ashton Jones as Don Giovanni; Logan Dooley as Leporello; William Mouat and Rick Agster as Commendatore; Sara Kennedy, Ashia Barnes, and Stephanie Rivero as Donna Anna; Juan José Beltrán Carmona and Pedro Barrera as Don Ottavio; Kathleen Echols, Eun Byoul Song, and Stephanie Lorenz as Donna Elvira; Seongeun Luna Park, Alana Sha’I, and Taylor Consiglio as Zerlina; Minki Hong as Masetto, and Omar Howard as Miss Shangay Lily.
Spontini’s La Vestale
October 28, 2023 at Gerald Lynch Theater
grattacielo.org/season/maria-callas-the-100th-birth-anniversary-la-vestale
Spontini’s La Vestale has only been presented in the United States once before: in 1926 at the Met with Rosa Ponselle in the title role. It has never been seen stateside, in Italian, since. This semi-staged concert production, starring Indra Thomas as Giulia and Tahanee Aluwihare as La Gran Vestale, will pay homage to legendary soprano Maria Callas, who led the 1954 Teatro alla Scala production and would have been 100 years old in 2023. The production will also be available via livestream.
Conductor: Christian Capocaccia, Director: Stefanos Koroneos, Poster Designer: Ricardo Monge
Cast: Indra Thomas as Giulia, Tahanee Aluwihare as La Gran Vestale, Kyle Oliver as Cinna, Eric Lindsey as Il Sommo Sacerdote, Rick Agster as Un Aruspice, and Hyunsoon Kim as Un Console. Casting for the role of Licinio will be announced on a later date
About Teatro Grattacielo
Teatro Grattacielo is unique in New York City. With a full symphonic orchestra and chorus, world-class soloists and repertoire that is first-rate (albeit unfamiliar), its performances yearly have been an event that has been dear to the hearts of operaphiles since 1994.
Teatro Grattacielo’s performances of operas that held the European stages from the 1820s to 1930s—yet many of which failed to find root in the international operatic repertoire—demonstrate that these works have a rare beauty that is only difficult to appreciate because they are so seldom heard. Such rarities as I Cavalieri di Ekebù, Riccardo Zandonai’s operatic treatment of Selma Lagerlöf’s Pulitzer Prize winning novel “The Saga of Gösta Berling,” caused a sensation in the audience, most of whom had never known that this intense, heartfelt music drama existed, and were privileged to hear it with little chance of it being performed again soon.
Other operas, such as Mascagni’s Guglielmo Ratcliff, Il Piccolo Marat, and Iris, Montemezzi’s L’Amore dei Tre Re, L’Incantesimo, and Risurrezione, as well as Giordano’s La Cena Delle Beffe amply show that the verismo movement extended far beyond the boundaries of the familiar warmth of Puccini, in a rich and varied tapestry of emotionally-charged music drama.
For its 18th season, Teatro Grattacielo presented Italo Montemezzi’‘s lyrical masterpiece, La Nave, adapted from the play by Gabriele d’Annunzio, which had not been seen in the U.S. since 1919, and which was performed by the Teatro Grattacielo Orchestra conducted by Maestro Israel Gursky, in a specially reconstructed version taken from the composer’s manuscript.
In 2019, Teatro Grattacielo presented a Gala of Verismo works for its 25th Anniversary Concert. In 2020 has filmed Umberto Giordano’s Fedora in collaboration with Global Vision and Beniamino Gigli, 100 YEARS at the Met, a dedication to great tenor Beniamino Gigli who’s Met debut occurred 100 years ago on November 26th 1920. Both productions are streaming on our website.
For more information, visit grattacielo.org.
