Steve
Vasta
After
receiving a liberal arts degree at Columbia University, STEPHEN
FRANCIS VASTA has spent much of the last twenty years as a conductor,
vocal coach, and keyboardist, both with companies in and around
his native New York and with prominent regional performing arts
organizations.
In New York, he conducted The Accomplish'd Maid - a contemporaneous
English-language version of Gaetano Piccinni's La buona figliuola
- and Cimarosa's Il matrimonio segreto with the Vineyard Theatre
Opera, subsequently bringing the latter production to Berkshire
Opera in Massachusetts; Cosi fan tutte, Fidelio, and Un ballo
in maschera for the Brooklyn Repertory Opera; Don Giovanni, La
serva padrona, and La Traviata for Lighthouse Opera; and two seasons
of Herbert, Romberg, and Friml operettas for the Light Opera of
New York. Other conducting credits include Die Fledermaus, The
Merry Widow, and The Mikado for the touring company Opera Northeast;
Orpheus in the Underworld at Indiana's Ball State University,
as Assistant Professor of Theatre; Handel's Rinaldo at the University
of Arkansas, Fayetteville; and Carmen at the BeRleayre Festival
Opera in upstate New York. He was also chorus master for the New
Jersey Association for Verismo Opera for two seasons, and has
assisted Sarah Caldwell, Cal Stewart Kellogg, Anton Coppola, and
Gunther Bauer-Schenk. On the concert platform, he has made guest
appearances with the Filharmonie Hradec Králové,
Czechia.
Mr. Vasta is equally adept as a conductor of musical theatre,
with extensive credits including Damn Yankees with Jamie Farr
at the Cape Playhouse, Massachusetts; Godspell at the Edinburgh
Fringe Festival; Camelot at Alabama Shakespeare Festival; The
Best Little W****house in Texas at Ball State University; Oh!
Coward off-Broadway in New York; and the 1992-3 international
tour of Peter Pan throughout the U.S., Canada, and East Asia.
An accomplished classical accompanist, Mr. Vasta has appeared
in that capacity at venues including New York's Weill Recital
Hall and the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC. As a guest
coach, he gave vocal master classes for the Arkansas chapter of
the National Association of Teachers of Singing (NATS), and was
the staff pianist for the International Workshop for Conductors
for two years.
He has been reviewing professionally since 1993, when Stereophile
magazine tapped him for a repertoire survey (Mahler's Second Symphony)
on six weeks' notice, and where he returned as a Contributing
Editor in early 2020. He was a regular contributor to Opera News
for over twenty-five years, until its recent demise; he also wrote
for Listener magazine, and has written for several websites, including
Positive Feedback (www.positive-feedback.com), the Hans Rott website
(www.hans-rott.de), and Naturlaut, the Chicago Mahlerites' quarterly
(at mahlerarchives.net).
Currently Mr. Vasta serves on the faculty of the American Musical
and Dramatic Academy (AMDA) in New York.
