People named Tony Amato

Tony Amato of Cleveland, Cuyahoga County, Ohio was born on May 12, 1905, and died at age 70 years old in December 1975.

Anthony Amato, Founder of Amato Opera, Is Dead at 91 By MARGALIT FOX DEC. 14, 2011 Anthony Amato, the founder and artistic director of the Amato Opera Theater, the scrappy, often threadbare and very rarely dull chamber operacompany on the Lower East Side of Manhattan that was a mainstay of New York’s cultural life for 61 years, died on Tuesday at his home on City Island, in the Bronx. Mr. Amato, who was also the company’s stage director, music director, prompter, vocal coach, diction coach, caterer, broom pusher and emergency tenor, among other things, was 91. The cause was cancer, said Rochelle Mancini, an editor and former principal singer with the company who helped Mr. Amato write a memoir, “The Smallest Grand Opera in the World,” published this year by iUniverse. Founded in 1948 by Mr. Amato and his wife, Sally, Amato Opera was long the brightest star in the constellation of semiprofessional opera companies spread over the city — the Off Broadway of the opera world. From its repertory of more than 60 productions, it staged half a dozen each season, including old reliables like Puccini’s “Bohème” and rarely heard works like “Lo Schiavo,” an 1889 opera by the Brazilian composer Carlos Gomes. Mrs. Amato died in 2000, at 82; Mr. Amato disbanded the company in 2009. In Amato’s first decades, when opera training programs were less ubiquitous, it was known as a proving ground for talented young singers. Many alumni went on to sing with major companies, including the Metropolitan Opera; among them are the tenors George Shirley and Neil Shicoff and the mezzo-soprano Mignon Dunn. Critics routinely praised Amato’s dramatic snap and sparkle, if not always its singing. But if the company’s later productions were often cast with singer-doctors, singer-lawyers and singer-dog groomers, that did nothing to dim the ardor of Amato’s perennially devoted audience. It was not only the ticket prices that drew them, though that was a consideration: Tickets cost $1.80 early on; in 2009, they were still only $35. (Nowadays, tickets for the Met normally cost $100 or more.) For the faithful, who returned year after year to the 107-seat theater at 319 Bowery, near Bond Street, a night at the Amato also offered the chance — a rare thing in this city — to witness grand opera as participatory democracy. Operagoers were greeted by Mrs. Amato, who, when not taking tickets, making costumes, running the lights or selling coffee and cookies at intermission, sang many of the company’s leading roles under her given name, Serafina Bellantone. Anthony Amato, the founder of Amato Opera Theater, in 1989.CreditRuby Washington/The New York Times On some nights the overture wafted through the theater on record, spun by Mr. Amato. (At first the orchestra pit had room for a piano or a pianist, but not both comfortably at once; it later accommodated a keyboard and a few woodwinds.) Costumes were rehabilitated until they fell to dust; many a wig began life as a mop. And if that wig sometimes became entangled with the scenery, the show went on. Onstage, snowstorms were accomplished with cascades of raw oatmeal, to the great satisfaction of the theater’s resident mice. Antonio Amato was born on July 21, 1920, in Minori, on the Amalfi Coast of Italy. At 7, he moved with his family to New Haven. He left high school amid the Depression to become a butcher, honest work that pleased his father. But young Mr. Amato, called Anthony or Tony, adored opera. He eventually prevailed, appearing as a tenor with regional companies and in summer stock. Mr. Amato met his wife in 1943 at the Paper Mill Playhouse in Millburn, N.J., where they were performing in Rudolf Friml’s operetta “The Vagabond King.” Every night onstage he knocked her down, as called for, and every night offstage he apologized so profusely that she took pity on him and married him, in 1945. Survivors include a brother, Albert. Afterward, Mr. Amato ran an opera workshop at the American Theater Wing in New York. Many of his students were returned servicemen, and he conceived Amato Opera to give them a place to perform. (Mr. Amato, who sang till the end of his life, was the company’s default understudy for all male roles.) The Amato’s first production, Rossini’s “Barber of Seville,” opened on Sept. 12, 1948, in the basement of Our Lady of Pompeii Church in Greenwich Village. For many years, singers were paid in meatballs, tenderly cooked by Mr. Amato and consumed family-style by the company. In later years singers got a stipend: $10 a performance. After playing in various spots around town — the church had commandeered its space for bingo — the company moved in 1964 to its Bowery home, near the punk-rock club CBGB. Reviewers often called the Amato’s theater “intimate,” but the word scarcely did justice to its confines. The stage was just 18 feet wide, with negligible wings. Singers sometimes had to exit through the theater’s back door, then re-enter by running through the parking lot, around the corner, through the front door, down the aisle and onto the stage. The parking-lot sprint entailed rubbing elbows with the neighborhood’s skid-row denizens. As one singer later recalled, he once made the dash costumed in tie and tails. Several men, thinking fortune had sent them a millionaire at last, touched him for money on his way through. Correction: December 16, 2011 An obituary on Thursday about Anthony Amato, the founder and artistic director of the Amato Opera Theater in Manhattan, misidentified, in some editions, the composer of the opera “The Barber of Seville,” which was the company’s first production in 1948. It was written by Rossini, not Mozart.

Tony Amato of Harris County, TX was born circa 1975. Family, friend, or fan, this family history biography is for you to remember Tony Amato.

Tony J Amato of Essex County, Massachusetts United States was born circa 1915. Family, friend, or fan, this family history biography is for you to remember Tony J Amato.

Tony Amato of Park Australia. Family, friend, or fan, this family history biography is for you to remember Tony Amato.

Tony Amato of Glendale, Maricopa County, Arizona was born on August 27, 1947, and died at age 62 years old on March 21, 2010.

Tony Anthony Amato of Santa Fe, Galveston County, Texas was born on January 21, 1920, and died at age 87 years old on February 24, 2007.

Tony Amato of Farmington, Oakland County, MI was born on August 13, 1927, and died at age 75 years old on February 2, 2003.

Tony Amato of Las Vegas, Clark County, NV was born on June 18, 1924, and died at age 82 years old on June 5, 2007.

Tony Amato of South Holland, Cook County, Illinois was born on April 5, 1909, and died at age 76 years old in October 1985.

Tony Amato of Chicago, Cook County, Illinois was born on September 25, 1887, and died at age 79 years old in August 1967.

Tony Amato of Illinois was born on August 25, 1887, and died at age 76 years old in September 1963.

Tony Amato of Montebello, Los Angeles County, California was born on January 9, 1908, and died at age 68 years old in February 1976.

Tony J Amato of Asbury Park, Monmouth County, NJ was born on October 7, 1926, and died at age 67 years old on January 27, 1994.

Tony Amato of Lyndhurst, Bergen County, NJ was born on June 5, 1929, and died at age 74 years old on March 23, 2004.

Tony Amato of Maspeth, Queens County, NY was born on January 31, 1905, and died at age 64 years old in August 1969.

Tony Amato of Brooklyn, Kings County, NY was born on July 2, 1903, and died at age 73 years old in January 1977.

Tony Amato was born on October 1, 1915, and died at age 54 years old in May 1970. Family, friend, or fan, this family history biography is for you to remember Tony Amato.