Michael Capasso is the General Director of the New York City Opera. He has produced, directed, and toured opera and musical theater productions in the U.S. and abroad for over 40 years. In June of 2014, along with philanthropist Roy Niederhoffer, he led the successful effort to bring the New York City Opera out of bankruptcy, laying the artistic, administrative, and fiscal groundwork for the company’s future. The revitalized New York City Opera returned to the stage in January 2016 with a celebratory production of Tosca. The company is once again on solid financial footing and producing full seasons of opera, concerts, and educational programming, with a special concentration on City Opera’s long legacy of producing new and innovative opera, refocused through a modern lens. Current company programming efforts, which have included seven New York, U.S., and world premieres since 2017, seek to reflect the diverse tapestry of New York City through ongoing initiatives: Ópera en Español, LGBTQ+ Pride Series, an ongoing partnership with the National Yiddish Theatre Folksbiene, and a celebration of Black excellence.

Mr. Capasso began his career producing and directing while still in his late teens and early twenties. In 1981, he, along with Diane Martindale, founded New York’s Dicapo Opera Theatre. In 1995, Capasso conceived and designed a permanent home and performance space for the company, repurposing the lower level of the St. Jean Baptiste Catholic Church on Manhattan’s East Side, and transforming the large, unused space into a 204-seat “jewel-box” theater. Drawing on his background in construction, he was involved in every facet of the project, even personally manning heavy equipment to dig the orchestra pit. Over the 30 years of his leadership, Dicapo Opera Theater presented a diverse programming to the New York public, and, in cooperation with the Armel Festival, premiered three productions of contemporary American operas in Europe. In celebration of the 75th anniversary of George Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess, Capasso mounted a production which began touring in the United States in February 2010. An acclaimed stage director, Mr. Capasso has directed over 100 productions of opera and musical theatre in the U.S. and internationally, including multiple regional, U.S., and world premieres with both Dicapo Opera and New York City Opera, including as recently as 2022 when he directed and produced the world premiere of Ricky Ian Gordon and Michael Korie’s The Garden of the Finzi-Continis. One of the foremost living Puccini experts, Mr. Capasso has directed every operatic note the maestro wrote, including all three versions of Madama Butterfly and the American staged premiere of Edgar.

As an author, his writing credits include: a staged adaptation of Dickens’ A Christmas Carol; Opera Senza Rancor, a satire on the world of opera; Puccini’s Passion, a biographical play with music on the life and career of Puccini; a new book and libretto for La Périchole; English librettos for Die Fledermaus and The Daughter of the Regiment; and a concert/lecture series for the New York Historical Society. Capasso’s film on the life and career of Enrico Caruso, which he wrote and produced, aired on the A&E Network’s Biography series in 1998. Other film credits include his direction of scenes from Nabucco for the feature film The Secret Lives of Dentists.

In 2016 Capasso was awarded an honorary Doctorate from the College of Mount Saint Vincent and the “Legends of the Arts” award from the Harvard Club. He has received New York City’s Ellis Island Medal of Honor, The Licia Albanese-Puccini Foundation’s Lifetime Achievement Award, and the Leonardo Da Vinci Award for Cultural Achievement from the Italian Heritage and Culture Committee of New York. In 2004, he was named “Man of the Year” by the Italian Welfare League and in 2009 received a Special Lifetime Achievement Award in the Arts from the Order Sons of Italy in America.

Mr. Capasso holds dual U.S. and Italian citizenship and speaks fluent Italian. His videos on Italian cooking are available on YouTube.

 

Michael Capasso Directorial Repertoire

 

Barber
Vanessa

Bellini
Norma

Bizet
Carmen

Francesco Cilluffo
Il caso Mortara*

de Falla
La vida breve

Donizetti
Il campanello^ (original version)
L'elisir d'amore
Lucia di Lammermoor

Carlisle Floyd
Susannah

Ricky Ian Gordon
The Garden of the Finzi-Continis*

Gounod
Faust
Roméo et Juliette

Lehár
The Merry Widow

Leoncavallo
Pagliacci

Mascagni

L'amico Fritz
Cavalleria rusticana

Massennet
Werther

Menotti
Amahl and the Night Visitors
The Consul
The Saint of Bleecker Street

Montemezzi
L'amore di tre re

Offenbach
Les contes d’Hoffmann
La Périchole

Thomas Pasatieri
God Bless Us Everyone (co-librettist)

Tobias Picker
Dolores Claiborne
Fantastic Mr. Fox
Thérèse Raquin

Puccini
La bohème
Edgar (American staged premiere)
La fanciulla del West
Madama Butterfly (all three versions: La Scala, Brescia, and Paris)
Manon Lescaut
La rondine
Tosca
Il trittico (Il tabarro, Suor Angelica, Gianni Schicchi)
Turandot
Le Villi/Messa di Requiem

Rachmaninoff
Aleko

Rossini
Il barbiere di Siviglia
La Cenerentola

J. Strauss
Die Fledermaus

Tchaikovsky
Iolanta

Verdi
Aida
Falstaff
Nabucco
Rigoletto
La traviata
Il trovatore

Robert Ward
Claudia Legare
The Crucible

Wargo
A Chekhov Trilogy

Weill
Street Scene
The Threepenny Opera

 

*WORLD PREMIERE
^AMERICAN PREMIERE