Tribeca Deli Converted Into Light Opera Home

By Carl Glassman
POSTED DEC.4, 2006

In its 70-year history, the Village Light Opera Guild has had many opening nights. But none was like the one staged last month at 65 Leonard Street, when there was no audience, but plenty to cheer.

This opening was a well-earned celebration. Following months of fundraising and countless hours of volunteer labor, the Guild converted a former deli into the group’s first real home. The Guild is a 200-member amateur group that stages such musical theater classics as “Oklahoma,” and “The Music Man,” along with light opera fare.

They perform twice a year in an 800-seat theater at the Fashion Institute of Technology. But the need was growing great for a space of their own where could rehearse, make costumes and construct and store sets.

Before moving to the former Isobel’s Deli, the Guild built its sets on Roosevelt Island, stored them in Long Island City, and rehearsed wherever they could.

“After a few more years we probably would have given up the ghost,” said Brien Milesi, the Guild’s president and leader of a team of 20 volunteers who gutted, built and soundproofed the space.

Having removed the entire contents of the deli, including the (empty) ATM machine, they set about the task of making the space usable. The walk-in cooler would hold the group’s archives, the kitchen would become the costume shop.

Beneath three layers of flooring and a ghastly smelling glue, there lay a hardwood maple floor. Behind the deli’s splash wall was brick, and inside its large box columns beautiful classical ones were revealed. Perhaps the best discovery was a shaftway leading to the sidewalk that would ease the movement of sets and costumes from the basement.

“All this intense work insures the viability of the group, giving it new life,” said Milesi. “Now you have the club house and you can do anything there without limitations.”

“This space for me changes the whole direction of the group,” said Karen Mason, a 10-year-veteran of the Guild. What likely won’t change is the shared passion for community theater that brought them all together in the first place.

“They welcomed me and respected me from the beginning,” said Mason, who came to New York with dreams of a professional career. “And then it just kind of became family.”