THE REHEARSAL

Ten performers days before their big fall shows.

- DINA LITOVSKY

10 DAYS UNTIL The Marriage of Figaro AT Little Island

ANTHONY ROTH COSTANZO

Countertenor

COSTANZO IS A RARITY in multiple ways. A star countertenor who sings at the Metropolitan Opera and a sometime cabaret performer, he's also the general director and president of Opera Philadelphia. And from September 5 through 22, he'll sing all the leading roles-male and females in an abridged, rearranged, and kaleidoscopic version of Mozart's The Marriage of Figaro.

"I've never done anything this hard," he says. "It's not as if I have one line and then I pause for someone else's response: I have every line. The saving grace is that when I switch from head voice to chest voice, they're different muscles so each one gives the other a break.

I'm starting to be able to get through it, but the question is, Can I get through 18 performances, five days a week? There's a frenetic, ecstatic quality to a one-person execution." JUSTIN DAVIDSON

90 DAYS UNTIL This Is My Favorite Song AT THE Peter Jay Sharp Theater

FRANCESCA D'UVA, Comedian

SHE'S THE ONE-MAN BAND of Brooklyn comedy, if one-man bands had sneakily powerful emotional through-lines and killer stand-up instincts. On November 24, D'Uva will take her show, This Is My Favorite Song, Off-Broadway at Playwrights Horizons. She started writing the show after her father died of COVID-19 in June 2020. "That was kind of the first very bad thing that had ever happened to me in my life," she says. "I came back to the city to try to get back into performing, and I was hating performing. But then I wrote this song, 'I Don't Want to Do This Show, and it sparked something new. My 'rehearsing' is a lot of me writing last minute. I rarely have things solidly written before I'm rehearsing because if it's solid, then I've gotten to that place by doing it over and over already." REBECCA ALTER