Sally Amato, 82, an opera singer who, with her husband, ran Amato Opera in Manhattan, died Aug. 16 at her home in the Bronx, The New York Times reported.
For 50 years, in several spaces including an intimate theatre in the Bowery, Ms. Amato and her husband, conductor Anthony Amato, presented operas on a shoestring budget. They were married in 1945, two years after they met performing at Paper Mill Playhouse in New Jersey. They worked together in programs of the American Theatre Wing.
Ms. Amato sang under her maiden name, Serafina Bellantone, briefly with the Amato company and continued to work as an actress and singer after its founding. She eventually took on business chores with the troupe and, the Times reported, greeted operagoers at the door of the theatre, as a kind of folksy ambassador the populist stagings, which included an intermission raffle announced by the conductor himself.
Her husband survives.
-- By Kenneth Jones