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Andrew M. Kurtz began thinking there was more to traditional opera more than a decade ago.
“Just me. It was just me when I started,” Kurtz, the Center City Opera Theater founder, said of his company’s 1999 debut. “It took lots of organization and a lot of hard work — a real vision and very long days. And we’re still a young company; I consider us a very young company in terms of other institutions in Philadelphia that have been around for dozens of years.”
Kurtz, who makes his home at 11th and South streets, is the general and artistic director of the business that focuses on developing new works, artists and audiences for opera. Its template has continued to evolve in an ever-changing process to enrich the artistic development of the work as well as enlighten the audience as to the creative process.
“We are a lab for new work, a leader in the field for new work, which is very Philadelphia,” Kurtz, 44, said. “Philadelphia is a hub of energy for creativity and I think that there are a lot of companies in the theatrical world focusing on a lot of cutting-edge work.”
In that vein, Kurtz and his company have about six productions in the works. Part of the innovative process that began in 2007 is the open-to-the-public seminars.
“We always did the workshops. What was new was the idea that we would open up the creative decision-making process to the public because usually the work is developed behind closed doors. We were especially trying to change that,” he said.
The open workshops — the next of which is scheduled for Jan. 14 — allow people to come to see a work in progress and participate in feedback sessions following the show.
“We learn a lot from the feedback from the people that come to see it,” the conductor said. “It’s not just a passive type of situation, these workshops present it and a feedback session about it directly follows from the attendees.”
For the upcoming season, the founder is particularly excited about the June world premiere of “Slaying the Dragon,” which explores the relationship between the Grand Dragon of the Ku Klux Klan — the highest ranking Klansman in a given state — and a local rabbi.
“It’s about how a community responds to hatred. About how two individual men’s journeys collide,” Kurtz said. “Can you forgive evil and how does the community, who has been victimized through bombings and swastikas and violent death threats, how does that community respond to an offer of peace?”
Kurtz attended Central High School before going to Charlottesville, Va. for undergraduate studies.
“When I went to the University of Virginia I had no intention of becoming a professional musician. I chose that school in particular because I was interested in international law. I was prelaw, initially,” he said. “I went in with an intention of coming out a lawyer and instead came out a conductor.”
The transformation from budding attorney to conductor was not miraculous, but instead a combination of a lifelong love of music and focused intensity.
“I started conducting in college. I had studied music my entire life. I was just always interested in it and as a violin player, I played in a lot of orchestras,” Kurtz, who carried more than 20 credits per semester in order to get both a bachelor’s and master’s in music history in four years, said. “I was able to put [that intense program] together. It was not a normal program.”
After graduating in 1989, Kurtz went on to complete doctorate work at The Peabody Institute of The Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, during which time he also held jobs such as the assistant conductor of the now-defunct Pennsylvania Opera Theater.
“I worked in a lot of places,” he said. “I had a home in Baltimore and a home in Philadelphia from ’92. Then Pennsylvania Opera Theater folded and I had gotten a job in Florida, so I started commuting to Florida and spending part of the year there.”
This coastal commute turned into a 17-year ritual that continues to this day, as Kurtz is still the conductor for the orchestra he began in Fort Myers, Fla., named the Gulf Coast Symphony. Though he splits his time among many projects, his heart still resides most often just east of Broad Street, where he founded the Center City Opera Theater.
“I had a passion for opera and a passion for new work — creating new work, developing new work. It had been nearly seven years since the demise of the other company I worked for and I felt there was a vacuum in Philadelphia and I had an opportunity.”
In the beginning, Kurtz focused on traditional works, always intending to move into more “cutting-edge” ventures for the opera community when he got his legs under him.
“We needed to wait until the infrastructure was in place. It was how it needed to happen,” he said. “We opened up the process now, but that was after we became experts about what needed to be done and how to run it. There was a learning curve. We are doing something that’s not really done by very many people.”
Other out-of-the-box offerings from the company include after-hour arias, which have the young members of the troupe performing drinking songs with patrons at local watering holes as well as Opera 4D, which features the group putting on a show in public spaces such as the Comcast Center.
Kurtz is also the tour conductor for the “Cantors: A Faith in Song,” featuring three of the world’s leading cantors, Alberto Mizrahi, Naftali Herstik and Benzion Miller. This commitment takes him around the world, but with his many hats and long hours, he makes sure to take some time and enjoy the offerings close to home as well.
“I think Philadelphia has a lot to offer. It’s a great environment and I love walking. I walk to the Italian Market and to shopping — you know you don’t get that out in the suburbs. It’s manicured lawns and driveways everywhere,” Kurtz, who has been on South Street for five years, said. “It’s much more diverse also. There is a richness of diversity [in South Philly].” SPR
Contact the South Philly Review at editor@southphillyreview.com.
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