Anton Coppola
Encyclopedia
Maestro Anton Coppola is an American opera conductor and composer. He is the uncle of film director Francis Ford Coppola
and actress Talia Shire
, as well as the great-uncle of Nicolas Cage
, Sofia Coppola
, Gian-Carlo Coppola
(deceased), Jason Schwartzman
and Robert Schwartzman.
during World War II
, conductor at Radio City Music Hall
and director of both the Symphony and Opera Departments at the Manhattan School of Music
. He earned a Bachelor's degree (1964) and a Master's degree (1965) in composition from Manhattan School of Music
and received honorary Doctorates from the University of Tampa
and Quinnipiac University
in Connecticut
.
Coppola was first married to Marion Jane Miller, a ballet dancer, with whom he had one child, Susan Marion Coppola (1943-2008). After their divorce, he remarried to Almarinda Drago, also a ballet dancer, with whom he had two children, Lucia and Bruno Coppola. He has five grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.
, a symphony
, and Sacco and Vanzetti,
an opera in mixed Italian and English about immigrants Sacco and Vanzetti
.
He conducted two film scores, The Godfather Part III
and Dracula. He appeared in The Godfather Part III and is seen conducting Cavalleria Rusticana in the Teatro Massimo of Palermo. In the 1950s and 1960s, Coppola was the musical director of six Broadway
musical
s including Silk Stockings
, Bravo Giovanni
and The Boy Friend
(with Julie Andrews
' U.S. debut). Coppola collaborated with the Royal Opera Orchestra
and opera soprano
Angela Gheorghiu
to release a recording of Puccini works.
He was honored with the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Puccini Foundation and recognized by the Italian government as Cavaliere, Gran Ufficiale. Anton Coppola currently serves as Maestro of Opera Tampa
.
He debuted with the New York City Opera
in 1965, conducting the world premiere of Jack Beeson
's Lizzie Borden
, and led performances of Carmen
(with Beverly Wolff, Richard Cassilly
and Norman Treigle
), La traviata
, Il barbiere di Siviglia, and Madama Butterfly
during the same year. For Desto, he then conducted the first recording of Lizzie Borden. In 1970, at the Seattle Opera
, Coppola led the world premiere of Carlisle Floyd
's Of Mice and Men
.
Francis Ford Coppola
Francis Ford Coppola is an American film director, producer and screenwriter. He is widely acclaimed as one of Hollywood's most innovative and influential film directors...
and actress Talia Shire
Talia Shire
Talia Shire is an American actress most known for her roles as Connie Corleone in The Godfather films and Adrian Balboa in the Rocky series.-Personal life:...
, as well as the great-uncle of Nicolas Cage
Nicolas Cage
Nicolas Cage is an American actor, producer and director, having appeared in over 60 films including Raising Arizona , The Rock , Face/Off , Gone in 60 Seconds , Adaptation , National Treasure , Ghost Rider , Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans , and...
, Sofia Coppola
Sofia Coppola
Sofia Carmina Coppola is an American screenwriter, film director, actress, and producer.In 2003 she received the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay for Lost in Translation, and became the third woman to be nominated for an Academy Award for Directing...
, Gian-Carlo Coppola
Gian-Carlo Coppola
-Early life:Coppola was born in Los Angeles, California, the son of set decorator/artist Eleanor Coppola and famed film director Francis Ford Coppola...
(deceased), Jason Schwartzman
Jason Schwartzman
Jason Francesco Schwartzman is an American actor and musician. He is perhaps best known for his roles in the Hollywood films Rushmore, Spun, I Heart Huckabees, Shopgirl, Marie Antoinette, The Darjeeling Limited, Funny People, and Scott Pilgrim vs. the World...
and Robert Schwartzman.
Life
Coppola started his career at the age of eight with the Metropolitan Opera Children’s Chorus. Coppola served as an army bandmasterBandmaster
A bandmaster is the leader and conductor of a band, usually a military band, brass band or a marching band.-British Armed Forces:In the British Armed Forces, a Bandmaster is always a Warrant Officer Class 1 . A commissioned officer who leads a band is known as the Director of Music...
during World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
, conductor at Radio City Music Hall
Radio City Music Hall
Radio City Music Hall is an entertainment venue located in New York City's Rockefeller Center. Its nickname is the Showplace of the Nation, and it was for a time the leading tourist destination in the city...
and director of both the Symphony and Opera Departments at the Manhattan School of Music
Manhattan School of Music
The Manhattan School of Music is a major music conservatory located on the Upper West Side of New York City. The school offers degrees on the bachelors, masters, and doctoral levels in the areas of classical and jazz performance and composition...
. He earned a Bachelor's degree (1964) and a Master's degree (1965) in composition from Manhattan School of Music
Manhattan School of Music
The Manhattan School of Music is a major music conservatory located on the Upper West Side of New York City. The school offers degrees on the bachelors, masters, and doctoral levels in the areas of classical and jazz performance and composition...
and received honorary Doctorates from the University of Tampa
University of Tampa
The University of Tampa , is a private, co-educational university in Downtown Tampa, Florida, United States. It is accredited by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools. In 2006, the University celebrated its 75th anniversary...
and Quinnipiac University
Quinnipiac University
Quinnipiac University is a private, nonsectarian, coeducational university located in Hamden, Connecticut, United States at the foot of Sleeping Giant State Park...
in Connecticut
Connecticut
Connecticut is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States. It is bordered by Rhode Island to the east, Massachusetts to the north, and the state of New York to the west and the south .Connecticut is named for the Connecticut River, the major U.S. river that approximately...
.
Coppola was first married to Marion Jane Miller, a ballet dancer, with whom he had one child, Susan Marion Coppola (1943-2008). After their divorce, he remarried to Almarinda Drago, also a ballet dancer, with whom he had two children, Lucia and Bruno Coppola. He has five grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.
Works
Among his works are a violin concertoViolin concerto
A violin concerto is a concerto for solo violin and instrumental ensemble, customarily orchestra. Such works have been written since the Baroque period, when the solo concerto form was first developed, up through the present day...
, a symphony
Symphony
A symphony is an extended musical composition in Western classical music, scored almost always for orchestra. A symphony usually contains at least one movement or episode composed according to the sonata principle...
, and Sacco and Vanzetti,
an opera in mixed Italian and English about immigrants Sacco and Vanzetti
Sacco and Vanzetti
Ferdinando Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti were anarchists who were convicted of murdering two men during a 1920 armed robbery in South Braintree, Massachusetts, United States...
.
He conducted two film scores, The Godfather Part III
The Godfather Part III
The Godfather Part III is a 1990 American gangster film written by Mario Puzo and Francis Ford Coppola, and directed by Coppola. It completes the story of Michael Corleone, a Mafia kingpin who tries to legitimize his criminal empire...
and Dracula. He appeared in The Godfather Part III and is seen conducting Cavalleria Rusticana in the Teatro Massimo of Palermo. In the 1950s and 1960s, Coppola was the musical director of six Broadway
Broadway theatre
Broadway theatre, commonly called simply Broadway, refers to theatrical performances presented in one of the 40 professional theatres with 500 or more seats located in the Theatre District centered along Broadway, and in Lincoln Center, in Manhattan in New York City...
musical
Musical theatre
Musical theatre is a form of theatre combining songs, spoken dialogue, acting, and dance. The emotional content of the piece – humor, pathos, love, anger – as well as the story itself, is communicated through the words, music, movement and technical aspects of the entertainment as an...
s including Silk Stockings
Silk Stockings
Silk Stockings is a musical with a book by George S. Kaufman, Leueen MacGrath, and Abe Burrows and music and lyrics by Cole Porter.Hildegarde Knef gives a vivid backstage account of the casting, rehearsals, tryouts and Broadway opening of "Silk Stockings" in her autobiography "The Gift Horse:...
, Bravo Giovanni
Bravo Giovanni
Bravo Giovanni is a musical with a book by A. J. Russell, lyrics by Ronny Graham, and music by Milton Schafer. It is based upon the novel, "The Crime of Giovanni Venturi", by Howard Shaw ....
and The Boy Friend
The Boy Friend
The Boy Friend is a musical by Sandy Wilson. The musical's original 1954 London production ran for 2,078 performances, making it briefly the third-longest running musical in West End or Broadway history until it was surpassed by Salad Days...
(with Julie Andrews
Julie Andrews
Dame Julia Elizabeth Andrews, DBE is an English film and stage actress, singer, and author. She is the recipient of Golden Globe, Emmy, Grammy, BAFTA, People's Choice Award, Theatre World Award, Screen Actors Guild and Academy Award honors...
' U.S. debut). Coppola collaborated with the Royal Opera Orchestra
Royal Opera, London
The Royal Opera is an opera company based in central London, resident at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden. Along with the English National Opera, it is one of the two principal opera companies in London. Founded in 1946 as the Covent Garden Opera Company, it was known by that title until 1968...
and opera soprano
Soprano
A soprano is a voice type with a vocal range from approximately middle C to "high A" in choral music, or to "soprano C" or higher in operatic music. In four-part chorale style harmony, the soprano takes the highest part, which usually encompasses the melody...
Angela Gheorghiu
Angela Gheorghiu
Angela Gheorghiu is a Romanian soprano opera singer. Since her professional debut in 1990, she has sung as soprano leading roles at New York's Metropolitan Opera, Covent Garden's Royal Opera House, the Vienna State Opera, Milan's La Scala, and many other opera houses in Europe and the United States...
to release a recording of Puccini works.
He was honored with the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Puccini Foundation and recognized by the Italian government as Cavaliere, Gran Ufficiale. Anton Coppola currently serves as Maestro of Opera Tampa
Opera Tampa
Opera Tampa is the resident opera company of the Straz Center for the Performing Arts .Now in its 15th season, Opera Tampa produces and presents grand opera...
.
He debuted with the New York City Opera
New York City Opera
The New York City Opera is an American opera company located in New York City.The company, called "the people's opera" by New York Mayor Fiorello La Guardia, was founded in 1943 with the aim of making opera financially accessible to a wide audience, producing an innovative choice of repertory, and...
in 1965, conducting the world premiere of Jack Beeson
Jack Beeson
Jack Beeson was an American composer. He was known particularly for his operas, the best known of which are Lizzie Borden, Hello Out There! and The Sweet Bye and Bye.-Biography:...
's Lizzie Borden
Lizzie Borden (opera)
Lizzie Borden is the best known opera by Jack Beeson. It is based on the real-life case of Lizzie Borden.It was written in 1965 and premiered on March 25, 1965 by the New York City Opera conducted by Anton Coppola. The English libretto is by Kenward Elmslie after a scenario by Richard Plant...
, and led performances of Carmen
Carmen
Carmen is a French opéra comique by Georges Bizet. The libretto is by Henri Meilhac and Ludovic Halévy, based on the novella of the same title by Prosper Mérimée, first published in 1845, itself possibly influenced by the narrative poem The Gypsies by Alexander Pushkin...
(with Beverly Wolff, Richard Cassilly
Richard Cassilly
Richard Cassilly was an American operatic tenor who had a major international opera career between 1954 and 1990...
and Norman Treigle
Norman Treigle
Norman Treigle was an American operatic bass-baritone, who was acclaimed for his great abilities as a singing-actor, and specialized in roles that evoked villainy and terror....
), La traviata
La traviata
La traviata is an opera in three acts by Giuseppe Verdi set to an Italian libretto by Francesco Maria Piave. It is based on La dame aux Camélias , a play adapted from the novel by Alexandre Dumas, fils. The title La traviata means literally The Fallen Woman, or perhaps more figuratively, The Woman...
, Il barbiere di Siviglia, and Madama Butterfly
Madama Butterfly
Madama Butterfly is an opera in three acts by Giacomo Puccini, with an Italian libretto by Luigi Illica and Giuseppe Giacosa. Puccini based his opera in part on the short story "Madame Butterfly" by John Luther Long, which was dramatized by David Belasco...
during the same year. For Desto, he then conducted the first recording of Lizzie Borden. In 1970, at the Seattle Opera
Seattle Opera
The Seattle Opera is an opera company located in Seattle, Washington. Founded in 1963 by Glynn Ross, who served as the company's first general director through 1983, Seattle Opera's season runs from August to late May, with five or six operas offered and with eight to ten performances each, often...
, Coppola led the world premiere of Carlisle Floyd
Carlisle Floyd
Carlisle Floyd is an American opera composer. The son of a Methodist minister, he based many of his works on themes from the South...
's Of Mice and Men
Of Mice and Men (opera)
Of Mice and Men is an opera in three acts by the American composer Carlisle Floyd. The English libretto was written by Floyd and is based on the novella of the same name by John Steinbeck. The opera was composed in 1969.- History :...
.
External links
- Floridian: “A well-conducted life”
- Opera Tampa: biography
- R.A. Forum: Anton Coppola, "Sacco and Vanzetti", opera
- Sacco and Vanzetti documentary featuring an interview with Anton Coppola