He's Doing All of Verdi
(Weather Permitting)

NY Times, by ANTHONY TOMMASINI

As names of organizations go, the New York Grand Opera Company may at first seem a bit too, well, grand. This company isn't even a mom-and-pop operation, since there is only a pop: Vincent La Selva, the stocky, affable 67-year-old American conductor who founded the company 24 years ago, serves as artistic director and essentially runs it alone. 

Yet, to date, this scrappy company has given 133 performances of 41 operas, many of them indisputably grand, for some one and a half million people. For the last 14 summers, it has been presenting staged performances of operas free in Central Park, regularly attracting audiences of several thousand. This summer's season opens tonight at Summerstage with "I Masnadieri" by Verdi. The opera, whose title means "The Bandits," starts the fourth year of the company's "Viva Verdi" festival, during which all 28 Verdi operas are being presented uncut, in chronological order, over seven consecutive summers. It's hard to imagine another company in the world that would undertake a project so insanely ambitious.

There are no full-time administrative employees in the company, just people on contract for specific tasks. Not only does Mr. La Selva conduct all the performances, he also auditions and rehearses the casts, supervises stage
technicians, negotiates with park officials, even prepares most of the printed advertising materials. For this he receives no salary, just a yearly $1,800 that represents union scale pay for conducting four performances.

"If I start explaining it, I can't figure out myself how I've done it," Mr. La Selva said recently at the company headquarters, two rooms in the Carnegie Hall Studios building. that he does do everything seems clear from the clutter in his office. Stacks of Cores and papers are everywhere. Boxes of props-umbrellas for the geisha girls in 'Madame Butterfly," spears for the Egyptians in "Aide"-are scattered about. "It could take a real archeological dig to uncover the history of the company," Mr. LaSelva says, "but it's all here."

These productions make easy targets for jaded connoisseurs. The sets and costumes are makeshift, amplification mishaps are common, and weather, as it will, plays havoc with performances. During one wind swept "La Boheme," Rodolfo and Marcello sang their duet clinging to the walls of their garret, which nearly blew away.

Yet Mr. La Selva is a gifted conductor with a sure grasp of Verdian style. His orchestra players are solid professionals. They have to be, given the limited rehearsal time the company can afford. And Mr. La Selva has a good record of discovering promising singers like Enrico Di Giuseppe and Harry Theyard and Catherine Luna. "I didn't create this company to rival anybody," he said. "I just knew there was a middle ground between the amateur and the Metropolitan Opera. And I knew there were a lot of talented people around who weren't doing much."

He could be describing himself in years past. Born in Cleveland to a music-loving family, he entered the Juilliard School at 18 studying trumpet
and conducting. There, he corralled some 60 leery students into an orchestra he organized specifically to perform new works by student
composers.

His professional career started off brightly, including a notable New York City Opera debut in 1965 conducting Menotti's "Saint of Bleecker Street." Howard Klein, a critic for The New York Times, wrote that the new conductor "promises to be one of the strongest at the City Opera staff," adding, "His was a fiery musicality that got stirring results from singer and player alike."

He stayed at City Opera for six seasons also working prominently during that time with the Opera Company of Boston, where in 1965 he conducted "La Boheme" with a great soprano in the twilight of her career, Renata Tebaldi, and a great tenor at the start of his, Placido Domingo, who was just 24.

Mr. La Selva's desire to conduct great operas and to mobilize talent lied to his forming the New York Grand Opera in 1973. In the early years it was a vagabond company, performing in various sites that Mr. La Selva found throughout the city. With the invitation to perform in the park, the company became a summer outfit. Since 1993, its 20th anniversary, sponsorship by the Dime Savings Bank of New York along with some city and state money other private grants and a hearty list of patrons have made the free performances possible.

It's tremendous to see all the people, especially young people, come to these operas," said Barry Tucker, son of the tenor Richard Tucker and president of the foundation for young singers that bears his father's name. "Vincent is doing terrific things," he added. "People come with picnic dinners, with babies and dogs. I'm sure most don't know that 'I Masnadieri' is this obscure work. They just come to hear."

Mr. La Selva had always had a penchant for offbeat repertory, like Leoncavallo's version of "La Boheme." But no company in the world would make a season of the four little-known Verdi operas in this summer's installment of the marathon. After "I Masnadieri", Verdi's 11th opera, written for the soprano Jenny Lind, there will be the first New York staged performance of "Jerusalem" (July 9); the first New York performance in 10 years of "II Corsaro" (July 23) and the first New York performance in 21 years of "La Battaglia di Legnano" (July 30).

That is, provided that rain does not derail another performance midway through. Breaking storms in summers past have put' the plan to perform all the Verdi operas in seven years behind schedule by two operas.

"I don't know what to do," Mr. La Selva said. "We'll not skip any. But we wanted to be finished in 2001, the 100th anniversary of Verdi's death. We might try to get five in next season, but it would be hard." That, down the road, such monumental works as "Aide" await is something Mr. La Selva cannot worry about now.

At times he wishes he were a staff conductor in a large company, so he could do his work and "let somebody else have all the headaches." He supports himself by teaching conducting and opera at Juilliard. But he is not complaining: "Look how lucky I've been, getting the opportunity to interpret these great works, bringing opera to people."

His audiences are not complaining either.