Sacco and Vanzetti : An American World Premiere

For those who are searching and waiting for the next great American opera, it may be found in Anton Coppola's new opera, Sacco and Vanzetti. In the words of Lawrence A. Johnson, critic for Opera News, "Sacco and Vanzetti may turn out to be the operatic sleeper of recent years and come to enjoy a greater shelf life than other works launched with much greater fanfare." ¹ Freelance writer and author Eugene H. Cropsey reviews the opera and traces the making of this ambitious work—one of the first new American operas of the twenty-first century—from its conception to its triumphant world premiere on 16 March 2001.

THE famous trial and conviction of anarchist immigrants Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti has been a part of Anton Coppola's psyche since boyhood. Born and raised in an Italian American community of East Harlem, he was ten years old when the two men were executed, and he remembers it well. "The story of Sacco and Vanzetti was part of everyday discussion," Coppola recalls, "with my family and their friends sitting around the dinner table, passionately arguing the cases of guilt or innocence. Some Italian Americans wanted to distance themselves from the derogatory implications of the case. Others felt that perhaps they should apologize for these two anarchists who came here and got themselves in trouble. Many believed that these two men were simply railroaded. This story has lingered in my subconscious for many years."

In 1995 Anton Coppola's nephew, film director Francis Ford Coppola, was planning to make a television documentary on Sacco and Vanzetti and, knowing of his uncle's intense interest in the subject, asked him to compose the music for it. He knew that his uncle had both knowledge and understanding of the story and would be able to bring to it a high level of dramatic expression through his music. But when Uncle Anton played a few of the pieces he had written for the documentary, his nephew was greatly impressed. "Francis looked at me," as Anton relates it, "and said, 'Uncle, this is an opera! You should write an opera!'"

The documentary was never made, but now, at the age of seventy-eight, Anton Coppola set out in earnest to write his first full-length grand opera. While his career had focused mainly on his work in the pit, he was no stranger to composition, having already written a number of works, including a symphony, a one-act comic opera, a violin concerto, and numerous film scores. Coppola, known affectionately as "the Maestro" by all who have worked with him, began his operatic career at age eight in the children's chorus of the Metropolitan Opera, appearing in the American premiere of Turandot. In 1935, when only eighteen, he conducted his first opera, Samson et Dalila, produced by the WPA. In the years that followed, Maestro Coppola conducted operas with almost all the important opera companies in the United States and Canada, including the San Francisco and New York City Operas. He also conducted the world premieres of Lizzie Borden, Deseret,and Of Mice and Men. In addition, Coppola is well known for his work as a conductor of Broadway musicals. He holds a master's degree in composition and for fifteen years was the director of both the symphony and opera departments of the Manhattan School of Music.

"I had always had it in the back of my mind that the story of Sacco and Vanzetti would make a great opera," said Coppola, "and I did a good deal of reading on the subject through the years. At one point, while I was on a conducting assignment with the New Orleans Opera Association, I spent much of my free time at the library. And it was there I wrote a complete outline of an opera about Sacco and Vanzetti. But it was Francis who finally gave...