American opera singer and director Anthony Roth Costanzo was BOTD in 1982. Born in Durham, North Carolina to an academic family, he began performing in musical theatre as a child, and began his professional career as a teenager, appearing in Benjamin Britten‘s opera The Turn of the Screw and later performing in Puccini’s Tosca with Luciano Pavarotti. He studied at Princeton University and the Manhattan School of Music, and was a Grand Finals Winner of the Metropolitan Opera National Council’s 2009 Auditions. In 2012, he won first prize in the Operalia competition, an international competition for emerging singers established by Plácido Domingo. As a countertenor, he quickly became an operatic star, admired for the beauty and power of his falsetto and his bright expressive stage presence. He is particularly associated with 18th century Baroque works, performing operatic roles originally written for castrati, including George Frideric Handel‘s Rodelinda and Rinaldo. He had great success as the titular Egyptian pharaoh in Philip Glass’ modernist opera Akhnaten, performing appearing in acclaimed productions at the New York Metropolitan Opera and the English National Opera, and performing on the Met’s Grammy-winning recording. He has also championed new composers, performing works written for him by Jimmy López, Jake Heggie, Matthew Aucoin and Nico Muhly, and created the show Only an Octave Apart with cabaret singer Justin Vivian Bond. During the COVID-19 pandemic, he created and produced the New York Philharmonic’s Bandwagon initiative, a series of socially-distanced concerts around New York City. Offstage, he appeared in James Ivory‘s 1998 film A Soldier’s Daughter Never Cries, earning an Independent Spirit Award nomination. In 2024, he was appointed general director and president of Opera Philadelphia, reinvigorating audience numbers with a “pick your price” ticket scheme. Later that year, he also appeared in a one-man performance of Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro, performing all seven major roles. Openly gay since forever, his current relationship status is unknown.