Amato Opera Company

Founded in 1948 as a non-profit organization, The Amato Opera Theater, Inc., survived until 2009 on a collective artistic desire to present grand opera that is good theater—and, at the same time managed to create a platform for aspiring young artists. In January 2009 it was announced that after 60 years the opera would come to a halt on the final day of May 2009. It's a particularly sad fate for this beloved opera company, though it hung on longer than most tiny troupes; to wit, so many small theaters formerly on the Bowery and lower Second Avenue vanished beginning in the early 1990s that it's increasingly tough to remember just how many have gone. Given the present spate of construction (recession or no) on the hot hot hot Bowery, it seems likely 319 Bowery will be swallowed whole (i.e. demolished) and give way to yet another unlovely glass tower.

Just to give a final sense of the Amato Opera's longevity, it was only the sixth record to be added to the NYC.com database, a database now of more than 250,000 records! On the other hand, we are not so smitten with nostalgia that we dare not speak the truth: like an old standby restaurant "just down the block" that you observe miraculously managing to cling to life year after year, you note its passing with sorrow—yet you never ate there more than twice.