Artist Profiles: Gina Crusco

Gina Crusco with tenor Marcello Giordani, photo by Manuel Servin

Gina Crusco
I’ve had a “checkered career,” including being a vocalist, choral conductor, voice teacher, yoga instructor, and opera director. These days I’m focusing on directing my newly-incorporated opera company, Underworld Productions Opera Ensemble. We’re based in Northern Manhattan and committed to serving our community. I strongly believe that this community will achieve full power only when the English-speaking and Spanish-speaking contingents come together as one. I love to create opera adaptations, abridgements and translations that bridge the language barrier and bring all my neighbors together. Because music goes beyond language’s poor attempts to express our human frailties and transcendent aspirations.

“I’ve attended all of Underworld Productions’ operas and have found them inventive, accessible and well done. Ms. Crusco’s versions of the operas communicate the original composers’ intentions and make the operas her own. They are fresh, contemporary, relevant – truly useful art that helps us make sense of our complex times even as it entertains and transports us.”
-- Maritza Arrastia, Bilingual Literacy Expert, 2006

Biography

Gina Crusco is an opera director, choral conductor, and vocalist. She is a 2008 recipient of the Fractured Atlas Career Development Award and a 2007 recipient of a Northern Manhattan Arts Alliance Individual Artist Grant. From 1998 to 2007, Ms. Crusco was on the voice faculty of New School University. She holds a B.A. from The University of Rochester, where she studied voice and piano at the Eastman School and graduated with highest distinction in Philosophy, and Master’s Degrees from Brown University (in Philosophy) and New York University (in vocal performance).

As Artistic Director of Underworld Productions, Gina guides programming, casting, and selection of collaborating artists, including designers, choreographers (e.g., for Purcell’s Dido & Aeneas), accompanists, and chamber orchestra members (e.g., the quartet that accompanied the world premiere of Henry Papale’s JULIA). Ms. Crusco develops original performing editions, including transforming Pergolesi’s Livietta e Tracollo – with interpolated music and bilingual translation – into The Adventures of/Las Aventuras de Liv & Traco. She has created musically-sensitive abridgements of four Mozart operas (Marriage of Figaro, Don Giovanni, Magic Flute, and upcoming, Cosi fan Tutte). Gina has devised updated dialogue to replace recitatives, created compelling supertitles, and crafted original lyrics (e.g., for A Victorian Christmas Carol).

Ms. Crusco has been a resident of Inwood since 1986 and for more than 20 years has integrated her artistic and professional pursuits into the community. She handles the extensive administrative and artistic imperatives of UP from her Inwood home office, and has brought the singers of Underworld Productions to perform at the Isabella Home in Washington Heights. Locally, Gina was the administrator of the Janet Gerson Dance Company, a group that brought free performances to Inwood’s parks with grants from local City Council members, banks, and hospitals. Gina sang in three productions by Cooper OperaWorks, an Inwood-based company that performed at Our Lady Queen of Martyrs Church. She sang with MUSE, early music chamber ensemble, in historic venues including the Dyckman House in Inwood.

With baton in hand, Ms. Crusco led full orchestra and the Jan Hus concert choir in performances of the Faure Requiem and Handel Messiah. She directed the Westport Madrigal Singers for six years, in performances including Britten’s Ceremony of Carols with harp, Dvorak’s In Nature (performed in Czech), and Copland’s In the Beginning. She led the Arcady Camerata in performances in Bar Harbor, Maine, and founded the Maine Institute of Madrigal Singing.

As a vocalist, Gina created a role alongside Lili Taylor’s and Paul Giamatti’s stage roles in the premiere of Increase at La MaMa ETC; appeared on television and was heard on WQXR radio with MUSE; sang the title role in Pergolesi’s La Serva Padrona in Todi, Italy; opened the second half of every concert with an aria for six weeks and eleven states with the Cornerstone Chorale; and came back the next year for another ten states.

Gina Crusco was the Maestro del Coro of Teatro Lirico Sperimentale di Spoleto for two opera seasons, sharing the stage with such luminaries as tenor Marcello Giordani and directors Gigi Prioietti and Lydia Biondi. The position entailed auditioning singers in the United States for travel to Spoleto, Italy; musical preparation of the chorus for six operas, including Scott Joplin’s Treemonisha, Verdi’s Rigoletto, and Donizetti’s Don Pasquale; and conducting off-stage entrances.

Ms. Crusco organizes UP’s community outreach programs. UP’s December 2006 benefit performance raised over $800 for a local soup kitchen. Gina and other UP teaching artists lead workshops with New York City public school students, offering them and their families an opportunity to get involved in a genre of music that they might not have been exposed to otherwise. Ms. Crusco has volunteered with the Head Start program at P.S. 5, leading movement classes for underserved children in Inwood.