Michael Capasso

Mr. Capasso is the former General Director of the New York City Opera.
He has produced, directed, and toured opera and musical theater productions in the U.S. and abroad for over 40 years. In June of 2014, along with philanthropist Roy Niederhoffer, he led the successful effort to bring the New York City Opera out of bankruptcy, laying the artistic, administrative, and fiscal groundwork for the company’s future. The revitalized New York City Opera returned to the stage in January 2016 with a celebratory production of Tosca. The company is once again on solid financial footing and producing full seasons of opera, concerts, and educational programming, with a special concentration on City Opera’s long legacy of producing new and innovative opera, refocused through a modern lens. Current company programming efforts, which have included seven New York, U.S., and world premieres since 2017, seek to reflect the diverse tapestry of New York City through ongoing initiatives: Ópera en Español, LGBTQ+ Pride Series, an ongoing partnership with the National Yiddish Theatre Folksbiene, and a celebration of Black excellence.
Mr. Capasso began his career producing and directing while still in his late teens and early twenties. In 1981, he, along with Diane Martindale, founded New York’s Dicapo Opera Theatre. In 1995, Capasso conceived and designed a permanent home and performance space for the company, repurposing the lower level of the St. Jean Baptiste Catholic Church on Manhattan’s East Side, and transforming the large, unused space into a 204-seat “jewel-box” theater. Drawing on his background in construction, he was involved in every facet of the project, even personally manning heavy equipment to dig the orchestra pit. Over the 30 years of his leadership, Dicapo Opera Theater presented a diverse programming to the New York public, and, in cooperation with the Armel Festival, premiered three productions of contemporary American operas in Europe. In celebration of the 75th anniversary of George Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess, Capasso mounted a production which began touring in the United States in February 2010. An acclaimed stage director, Mr. Capasso has directed over 100 productions of opera and musical theatre in the U.S. and internationally, including multiple regional, U.S., and world premieres with both Dicapo Opera and New York City Opera, including as recently as 2022 when he directed and produced the world premiere of Ricky Ian Gordon and Michael Korie’s The Garden of the Finzi-Continis. One of the foremost living Puccini experts, Mr. Capasso has directed every operatic note the maestro wrote, including all three versions of Madama Butterfly and the American staged premiere of Edgar.