When you hire countertenor Anthony Roth Costanzo for an operatic production, you don’t just get a singer of extraordinary vocal and expressive power. You also get a part-time marketing director, press rep, outreach coordinator and associate producer.
To hear him tell it, that’s all part of the job.
“As a singer, you’re a freelancer, and therefore you are your own CEO,” he said during a recent interview with The Chronicle. “It’s our responsibility to keep the art form vibrant, and for better or worse that means you have to think about social media, you have to think about marketing, you have to think about press.”
Costanzo returns to the Bay Area this week to appear in Handel’s “Aci, Galatea e Polifemo,” an intimate chamber opera being presented by the Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra & Chorale. But the roots of the project, which had its premiere two years ago at National Sawdust in New York City, originated with one of its co-producers.
That would be, you guessed it, Costanzo.
“As a countertenor, your career is not necessarily about the standard repertoire at the big houses,” he said. “So I’ve always had to carve my own path, and that led me to producing.
“这是一个模糊的词,因为我们认为它的内涵ms of a Broadway producer or a film producer. But what I actually did in this case was find the artistic partners, choose the piece and raise the money. So that seems like producing.”
Costanzo, 37, made the whole thing sound unnervingly easy. He’s got a host of friends and connections that he can draw on as collaborators — not just from the musical world but also from the realms of dance, film, couture, visual art and architecture. He clearly knows how to deliver an elevator pitch and how to sweet-talk funding out of potential donors.
And he also finds time to maintain his vocal technique at the highest level.
“I’m a very effective multitasker,” he said. “I’m the kind of person who would rather come home from dinner and spend two hours just banging through the day’s emails in a very focused way, get my eight hours, get up, warm up, practice and do what I have to do to make sure the singing is good.”
So Costanzo does get enough sleep, but he admitted he doesn’t have much of a personal life. Asked whether he is single, he said he is, “unless anyone wants to change that — open call.”
The 2017 launch of “Aci” marked the first of several projects from Costanzo’s producing partnership with Cath Brittan, whom he calls his “partner in crime.” (The outfit is called the Supper Club because it was hatched during a five-course meal the two prepared together during a Baroque production at the English National Opera.) Costanzo enlisted director Christopher Alden — who had worked with him in 2014 onHandel’s “Partenope”at San Francisco Opera — and his castmates, soprano Lauren Snouffer and baritone Davóne Tines. Brittan coordinated the partnership with Philharmonia.
But the work never stops, and it’s not all onstage or in the rehearsal room. No sooner had Costanzo got to town than he swung by the San Francisco offices of the ad agency Goodby Silverstein, where he sang a bit, talked some more and got a roomful of young opera neophytes to pull out their phones and buy tickets on the spot.
“I’ve always been a very determined person.”
Costanzo has also been performing for most of his life. Born and raised in North Carolina — the son of two psychologists on the faculty at Duke University — he found his way onto the Broadway stage as a child, touring with such shows as “Falsettos” and “The Sound of Music.” By 15, he was living on his own in New York.
He discovered opera at 13, through an appearance as Miles in Britten’s “The Turn of the Screw,” and film — as a serious art form, anyway — a couple of years later when he was cast in the 1998 movie“A Soldier’s Daughter Never Cries.”
His career as a producer began during his senior year at Princeton, in a whirlwind of resourceful hustle that would have made Horatio Alger blush. The details are delightful but intricate; suffice it to say that what began as an original performance piece on the lives and careers of castrati — which the music department was willing to hand over $1,000 to fund — ballooned into a short-film project with a six-figure budget that was selected by the Cannes Film Festival.
Most recently, Costanzo starred at the Metropolitan Opera in the title role of Philip Glass’ “Akhnaten,” the type of critical and financial success that is practically unheard of in opera. Did Costanzo do his part to drum up interest? Of course.
In 2018, he unveiled “Glass Handel,” an elaborate multidisciplinary evening combining the works of those two composers, and released an album from it that was nominated for a Grammy. Don’t imagine that the juxtaposition was anything but planned.
“我知道‘Akhnaten’was coming down the pike, and we’d already done it in London, so I knew it was one of the best shows I’d ever done. And as a practical person, I was very aware that it could be a big hit, but that it would be partially dependent on how we sold it.
“So when Universal Records came to me and said, ‘Would you like to make an album?’ I thought, let’s start a long-term strategy to build a platform to ‘Akhnaten.’ ”
While he juggles all these projects, Costanzo continues to stay busy musically. He’s preparing for the 2021 world premiere of “The Lord of Cries,” the long-awaited second opera by composer John Corigliano. He’s preparing for a reprise of “Akhnaten” at the Met and a tour with the Baroque ensemble the English Concert. He’s preparing an array of recital programs.
But he keeps an eye on the bigger picture.
“I’m always thinking about how to make my impact,” he said as our conversation wound up. “Is it as a countertenor singing Handel in Europe? Sure, sometimes. But is that how I can make themostimpact?”
And with that, Costanzo headed back to his hotel, where there were emails to return, budgets to look over and marketing strategies to devise.
“Aci, Galatea e Polifemo”: Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra & Chorale. 8 p.m. Friday, Jan. 24, through Feb. 1. $75-$120. ODC Theater, 3153 17th St., S.F. 415-295-1900.www.philharmonia.org