Anthony Roth Costanzo

Is Pushing Opera Outside The Box

When opera star Anthony Roth Costanzo began plotting the follow-up to his Grammy Award-nominated 2018 album, ARC, the Durham, N.C.-born countertenor was sure of one thing: “I really didn’t want it to be one of these boring classical music albums,” he says with a laugh.

So, like any self-respecting member of the LGBTQ+ community, Costanzo looked to trailblazing women for inspiration. During a chat with New York cabaret iconoclast Justin Vivian Bond about their oppositesattract friendship, Costanzo was reminded of a 1976 TV special that paired two stage legends — soprano Beverly Sills and comedienne Carol Burnett — to “hilarious and bizarre” effect.

Drawing on “that high-low dichotomy, but also high and low culture,” Costanzo and Bond began developing a live show that morphed into January’s Only an Octave Apart, a duets album melding pop hits with classical arias in ways that are both puckish and poignant — think Kate Bush and Peter Gabriel’s “Don’t Give Up” juxtaposed with “Deh placatevi” from Gluck’s Orfeo ed Euridice, about pounding on the gates of hell to bring a lover back to life. “When we sat in the studio and listened to it, both of us started to tear up, thinking about what it could mean to a community of people who are sometimes othered and struggling with their own identity,” Costanzo says.

Costanzo has built a singular career with his distinctive vocal range (countertenors possess the highest adult male singing voice) on gorgeous display in what has become a signature role: the titular young pharaoh in Philip Glass’ Akhnaten, currently playing at the Metropolitan Opera; its recording won Costanzo a 2022 Grammy. But he is also a formidable presence outside opera’s hallowed halls, where he has sought out like-minded artists — from painter George Condo to filmmaker James Ivory — for diverse interdisciplinary projects.

Only an Octave Apart, he says, is one that pushed him to weave an even bolder queerness into his art. The opera world “can seem like a foreboding environment,” says Costanzo. (As we speak, he’s about to get all his body hair waxed as prep for Akhnaten.) “You don’t always get to express that queerness and identity in the work you’re doing in classical music. All of a sudden [with Octave], even though I was singing classical music, I felt like I was expressing the essence of who I was. That felt powerful to me.”

While Costanzo says that opera — with its history steeped in queens, divas and camp — is in some ways “even more queer than Broadway,” that connection isn’t necessarily apparent to everyone. When Bond and Costanzo set their sights on a collaborative concert with the New York Philharmonic, “there were a lot of roadblocks to get through — it was totally different from what they normally do,” Costanzo explains. He credits the organization’s president/CEO, Deborah Borda, with championing his vision; when the concert series wrapped in January, he received “some really moving emails from the orchestra, about how they never could have imagined doing this, but it felt absolutely necessary.”

The mere existence of the Octave album, Costanzo adds, feels like a small miracle. “It’s not cheap to make those things,” he bluntly says. “It was a crazy concept, and I’m thrilled Universal [Music, specifically Decca Records] let me do it.” He’s hopeful that it — along with his own ever-evolving career path — will inspire other artists.

“I am definitely in search of all kinds of friends and people. I want to understand other worlds and generations,” says the singer, who just turned 40. “What’s key is collaboration. Think intentionally about how to creatively produce and grow your project and reach more people. It adds up.”