Previews: Teatro Gratticielo Presents COSI FAN TUTTE and The Tempest at La MaMa
Teatro Grattacielo Opens an Ambitious Double Bill at La MaMa, Pairing a New Shakespearean Opera with Mozart's Enduring Comedy
In an operatic landscape where financial realities often encourage familiar titles and conservative productions, Teatro Grattacielo continues to distinguish itself by embracing artistic risk. The New York company, long admired for reviving neglected works from the Italian repertoire, has steadily broadened its mission in recent years, commissioning new productions, championing contemporary composers, and developing emerging artists while remaining firmly rooted in the traditions of lyric theater.
That philosophy is on full display next week when Teatro Grattacielo launches its summer season at La MaMa's Ellen Stewart Theatre with two dramatically contrasting works presented in repertory: the world staged premiere of Joseph Summer's The Tempest and a boldly reimagined production of Mozart's Così fan tutte. Although separated by more than two centuries of musical history, both operas explore the shifting terrain of love, forgiveness, illusion, and human frailty—themes that remain as compelling today as when Shakespeare and Mozart first gave them life.
The productions also represent another milestone for Artistic and General Director Stefanos Koroneos, whose tenure has transformed Teatro Grattacielo from a respected niche company into one of New York's more adventurous operatic organizations.
A native of Greece, Koroneos has built an unusually diverse career as a stage director, producer, educator, and arts administrator. Since assuming leadership of Teatro Grattacielo in 2019, he has expanded the company's programming well beyond its original focus on neglected Italian masterpieces. New commissions, educational initiatives, collaborations with international artists, and increasingly ambitious productions have become hallmarks of the organization under his guidance.
Koroneos has also established himself as a sought-after stage director in his own right. His productions have been presented in the United States and Europe, while recent engagements have included work with the Metropolitan Opera directing staff for revivals of The Barber of Seville and Carmen. Throughout his work runs a consistent philosophy: opera succeeds when great storytelling and emotional truth are allowed to stand alongside musical excellence.
That approach seems particularly well suited to The Tempest, which receives its first fully staged production on Thursday, July 16 at 7:00 p.m., with a second performance on Saturday, July 18 at 3:00 p.m.
Koroneos places The Tempest inside a crumbling 1980s film studio, where Prospero becomes a director consumed by the need to control the people and stories around him. Both deeply personal and theatrical, the production is Koroneos’s love letter to the fragile world of theater he has inhabited for 35 years. Through artificial landscapes, unstable structures, and a world shaped by performance, it explores control, desire, identity, and the cost of finally allowing the story to continue without its creator.
The production is conducted by Enrico Fagone, whose international career has earned praise for combining rhythmic precision with expressive warmth. As music director, Fagone brings considerable experience interpreting both contemporary scores and traditional repertoire, an important asset for a work making its staged debut.
Koroneos directs a cast tasked with introducing audiences to characters that are already deeply embedded in the cultural imagination. Rather than competing with Shakespeare's legacy, the production aims to illuminate the emotional humanity beneath the familiar story, emphasizing forgiveness over spectacle and psychological transformation over theatrical excess.
If The Tempest represents the company's commitment to expanding the operatic repertoire, Mozart's Così fan tutte demonstrates its willingness to reconsider the classics through a contemporary lens.
Performed on Friday, July 17 at 7:00 p.m. and Sunday, July 19 at 3:00 p.m., the production is conducted by acclaimed Mexican pianist and conductor Abdiel Vázquez and directed by Cate Pisaroni, who approaches Mozart's comedy less as an eighteenth-century farce than as an unexpectedly modern examination of intimacy and emotional vulnerability.
For generations, Così fan tutte has occupied an uneasy place within the operatic canon. Its premise—a wager in which two officers disguise themselves to test the fidelity of their fiancées—has alternately been dismissed as implausible comedy or celebrated as one of Mozart's most psychologically sophisticated collaborations with librettist Lorenzo da Ponte.
Pisaroni's production embraces the latter view. Inspired visually by Bauhaus aesthetics and Lars von Trier's minimalist film Dogville, the staging strips away decorative realism in favor of an abstract theatrical environment where shifting emotional relationships become the central dramatic landscape. The result promises to foreground the opera's questions about trust, desire, identity, and the often uncomfortable unpredictability of love.
The ensemble cast brings together an accomplished roster of emerging and established singers, reflecting Teatro Grattacielo's long-standing commitment to developing young vocal talent while maintaining high artistic standards. Mozart's sextet demands extraordinary musical balance and dramatic chemistry, requiring each performer to navigate rapid shifts between sparkling comedy and genuine emotional revelation. Supported by Vázquez's elegant musical leadership, the production seeks to reveal the emotional complexity that has increasingly made Così fan tutte one of Mozart's most admired operas.
Behind both productions stands an equally accomplished creative team. Designers have created two visually distinct theatrical worlds while taking full advantage of the intimacy of La MaMa's Ellen Stewart Theatre. Rather than overwhelming audiences with elaborate spectacle, both productions emphasize storytelling, allowing performers and music to occupy the center of the dramatic experience.
That artistic philosophy has become central to Teatro Grattacielo's identity. Founded in 1994 to revive forgotten Italian operas, the company has gradually evolved into a broader creative institution that views opera not as a fixed historical artifact but as a living theatrical form capable of continual reinvention. Whether introducing audiences to a contemporary work like The Tempest or reexamining Mozart through a modern perspective, the goal remains the same: to create productions that speak directly to today's audiences while honoring the musical integrity of the scores themselves.
For New York audiences, the repertory schedule offers an unusually rewarding opportunity. Over the course of a single weekend, theatergoers can experience the birth of a new Shakespearean opera alongside one of the supreme masterpieces of the classical repertoire, each interpreted through the imaginative vision of artists committed to keeping opera vibrant, immediate, and relevant.
Performances of The Tempest take place on Thursday, July 16 at 7:00 p.m. and Saturday, July 18 at 3:00 p.m. Così fan tutte follows on Friday, July 17 at 7:00 p.m. and Sunday, July 19 at 3:00 p.m. All performances will be presented at La MaMa's Ellen Stewart Theatre, 66 East Fourth Street in Manhattan.
Tickets are available through Teatro Grattacielo, with prices beginning at approximately $50 for Così fan tutte and $60 for The Tempest. Additional information and ticket purchases are available at grattacielo.org.
-Peter Danish