Amato: A Love Affair With Opera
D: Stephen Ives. (Video, 60 min.)
You know how modern science has those microscopic cameras that can snake through the human body’s passageways and show you a human heart? Well, documentarian Stephen Ives has a camera that does the same thing. When it winds its way through the Amato Opera House, down the narrow stairs and hallways to its cramped pit and postage-stamp stage, it’s traveling through a living being, an institution that pulses with a vibrant passion for music and theatre. And when it settles on Tony and Sally Amato, the couple who founded this small New York company in 1948 and have been giving young singers a place to perform in full productions of classic operas for half a century, it shows us the company’s beating heart. In his tender, sweet film, Ives reveals the humor, generosity, and boundless enthusiasm for their art and each other that has sustained both the Amatos as a couple and their labor of love for so many years. For these two people, romance is enduring and life is a never-ending performance, and being able to witness that is inspiring. (Bad Dog, 3/17, 5:45pm)
Amato was the runner-up for the Jury Award for Best Documentary.
This article appears in March 16 • 2001.