Tampa Bay opera group scores a premiere

Anton Coppola, widely known in opera circles, will premiere Sacco and Vanzetti at the Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center in 2001.

By JOHN FLEMING

© St. Petersburg Times, published May 3, 2000

TAMPA -- Sacco and Vanzetti, an opera by Anton Coppola, will receive its world premiere next year at Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center.

"It's finally going to happen right here in Tampa," said Coppola, who has been working for five years on the opera. He is conducting La Traviata at the center this weekend.

Sacco and Vanzetti will be the first original production by TBPAC's Center Opera Company, which has been limited to putting on familiar works such as Madame Butterfly, Carmen, La Boheme and Tosca once or twice a year since 1996. To stage the world premiere by a widely known opera figure such as Coppola is a coup.

"It's going to be a big deal for us, because we're a young company," said TBPAC president Judi Lisi. "There aren't many new operas, and I think there will be a lot of interest in the opera world for this one."

When Coppola, born in 1917, was growing up in New York City, the trial of Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, a pair of Italian immigrant anarchists charged with murder, was the talk of the nation. Despite sketchy evidence, they were found guilty and executed in 1927 amid widespread public protests.

"I have just one more scene to write," Coppola said. "The end of the first act will be the trial scene in which they are convicted and found guilty and condemned to the electric chair. From then on, we follow their lives in their prison cells and the world around them and how it affects them. It follows in chronological order the sequence of events. It's almost like a documentary."

Originally, Coppola had composed incidental music to go with a proposed TV documentary on the case by his nephew, Francis Ford Coppola, director of the Godfather trilogy, but then decided to make it into an opera. He has written the score and libretto, sung in English and Italian.

Coppola has had a distinguished career as a conductor of Broadway musicals such as The Boy Friend (starring Julie Andrews in her American debut) and operas such as the premieres of Lizzie Borden and Of Mice and Men. For 15 years, he was director of the symphony and opera departments at the Manhattan School of Music. He has composed a symphony, a violin concerto and film scores.

He has conducted all six of the operas produced by TBPAC. The Sacco and Vanzetti premiere is scheduled for March 16-18. Lisi said the production has a budget of $600,000.

"It's intended to be the most important project that the Center Opera has ever attempted," Coppola said. "It will draw international attention. What Judi hopes is that it will give the company the importance it deserves."