Who’s punting the naked countertenor?
mainSome hard-baked New York PR is working all hours to get Anthony Roth Constanzo into every kind of media.
First the splash about naked dangly bits in Bloomberg, a space where no singer has trodden since Manuela Hoelterhoff retired.
Now a blowout in a food magazine – fffs sake – under the headline ‘Inside Anthony Roth Costanzo’s Gold-Dusted, Cake-Filled, High-Energy Kitchen’. Doncha just wanna be there?
It does not take a minute before the kit comes off.
Second paragraph:
Then again, How does he do it? is a cliché question when it comes to the opera singer and producer. People ask: How does he sing so high? (Costanzo is a counter-tenor, singing in the same range as a mezzo-soprano). How does he get naked in front of all those people? (In Akhnaten, the Philip Glass opera that opens at the Met on Friday night, Costanzo spends five long minutes on stage completely nude.) And, the question I asked the morning I visited him this summer: How does he get home at one a.m., bake two cakes for a photo shoot, sleep for just a few hours, then answer the door in the morning with cartoon-level cheeriness—all without a drop of caffeine? (Costanzo avoids caffeine, preferring, he says, “to manufacture my own energy.”)
photo: Joseph De Leo/Epicurious
Anything else you wanted to ask?
Like: who’s the PR?
Somebody has told him that he must have a ‘portfolio career’.
Hey, naked opera stars draw clicks, as you yourself well know.
Touche. (Or douche, perhaps …)
Simpler version: “click for dicks”
Never do home stories. Never. Ever.
§1 in how to be recognized as a serious artist.
Yes, but if trying to be a serious artist doesn’t pan out, one must earn a living somehow.
If this was Rod Stewart no one would critizise. But God forbid classical musicians do something that people outside of the opera world actually can actually relate to.
After readers have googled Mr. Constanzo, they can check out photos of Jakub Jozef Orlinski. . . .
Maybe the Met will cast him in the revival.
What’s curious is the Met’s own press office has been barely staffed of late. They lost their PR director in August and another publicist recently left. This seems more like the work of a hired-gun celebrity publicist, however.
“…barely staffed…”
They’re naked too?
I’d swear Harry Kraut was still around pulling strings.
“Some hard-baked New York PR is working all hours to get Anthony Roth Constanzo into EVERY KIND OF MEDIA.”
Hmmm, you were saying…?
“Anything else you wanted to ask? Like: who’s the PR?”
You should find out and hire them yourself, Norman 🙂
(not for purposes of nakedness — necessarily — but because they’re obviously really good at attracting attention)
In the immortal words of the teens on Tik Tok: “ok boomer”
According to his website, it’s Aleba Gartner. (That took 1 minute to find out …) It could only have been two, Gartner or Andrew Ousley, the clear best in the business in NY.
I’ll agree with that if you throw in 21C Media.
Hey, when you can’t sing but your parents have money, just collect a bunch of fly-by-night society figures and make a crappy cake for them, why don’t you?
Hummm, the second negative post in two days about Mr. Costanzo getting publicity. Seems odd from someone who’s in the publicity business….
I have no judgment to make yet because I haven’t seen it, though I’m looking forward to it. I believe his character isn’t seen until the coronation scene which follows the prelude and funeral scene. And he doesn’t sing until the last scene of Act I, the marvelous Window of Appearances trio. Maybe there’s a point to the nudity and even if there’s not, does that make it permissible for prudes to pass global judgment? It’s the 21st century and a lot of people choose to live in a Victorian mind. As sad as it is stupid.
I think it’s fantastic opera folk are getting themselves out there and being part of broader culture/media- Pavoratti did it all the time as did Sills, it encourages people to go to and think of/be comfortable with opera
He’s been very strong on self-promotion since his uni days. Am sure he has professional PR help now, but wouldn’t be surprised if much of the driving force is as “self-manufactured” as his energy.