An Opera Star Is Selling His Starter Home in the West Village

When Anthony Roth Costanzo was starting to make a name for himself as an opera singer, he was also giving his parents advice on Manhattan real estate.

“I was always drawn to New York,” said Mr. Costanzo, who grew up in Durham, N.C., and was performing on Broadway at age 11. “By the time I was 15, I convinced my parents that they should buy an apartment.”

He helped them find an Upper West Side studio, then a loft in the East Village, and eventually they retired to a one-bedroom apartment on the Upper East Side, all starting with a $90,000 investment. “While I was flipping and trading apartments, I was saving every penny I made out of college and grad school so I could buy my own place,” said Mr. Costanzo, who is currently reprising his role at the Metropolitan Opera as an Egyptian pharaoh in Philip Glass’s Akhnaten.

In 2013, with a $215,000 down payment scraped together from singing competitions and various performances, he bought his first home, a one-bedroom unit at 92 Horatio Street, a boutique co-op building in the West Village, paying $630,000. He has since made several updates and renovations.

The apartment holds many memories for Mr. Costanzo, 40, a countertenor and impresario who has led performances at opera companies around the world. It was where he entertained, practiced his arias, and even performed. But the flipping bug has resurfaced, he said, and he is ready for something roomier. His co-op is now on the market for $965,000. Monthly maintenance is $1,293 (plus a $147 monthly assessment for capital improvements through the end of next year).

“I just want a place where I could have the whole cast for dinner,” said Mr. Costanzo, who in addition to singing and acting, has added creative producer to his extensive repertoire. He says he also wants enough space, preferably elsewhere downtown, to hold a harpsichord, a gift from his first music teacher.

The co-op apartment encompasses around 650 square feet and offers glimpses of the Hudson River and a portion of the High Line. It features nine-foot ceilings, original moldings and hardwood floors, doors of reclaimed wood, and a working wood-burning fireplace.

“It has a Parisian-type feel to it,” said David A. Palmieri, an agent at the Corcoran Group who is listing the property with his colleague Nathaniel Faust.

The home is entered through a small foyer that leads to an open kitchen and living room. The kitchen is framed with a crowning cornice and features stainless-steel appliances, original wood cabinetry, a copper countertop, delft tiles, and a drop-down butcher block that Mr. Costanzo had converted from a built-in ironing board.

The living room, anchored by the fireplace with a carved wood mantel, has oversize windows, built-in shelves, a decorative ceiling medallion, and a window shade that doubles as a projector screen. There are more shelves in the bedroom, along with two closets.

The recently renovated bathroom is outfitted with a Carrara marble countertop, brass hardware and a copper basin. He kept the original built-in hamper and added linen storage.

“I tried to keep those original details, but I also updated,” he said.

The five-story, red brick co-op building, built in 1920 between Washington and Greenwich Streets and near the Whitney Museum of American Art, contains 76 units. It recently underwent renovations updating the lobby, hallways and laundry room.

Mr. Costanzo fondly recalls the many dinner parties he has held at the apartment — he’d keep a guest book of attendees, most of them from the opera world, and usually serve five plated courses. His dessert specialty: croquembouche.

And then, of course, there are the neighbors, whom he says he will also miss. Some of them have been known to gather outside his apartment while he played his grandmother’s 19th-century Mason & Hamlin upright or warmed up in the morning before heading out on his bicycle to the Metropolitan Opera, roughly three miles away. This year he and several others at the Metropolitan Opera won a Grammy for best opera recording for “Glass: Akhnaten.”

“They sometimes brought me orchids,” Mr. Costanzo said of the neighbors. “They seemed to enjoy it.”

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