Met Opera regular from Teaneck gets a new career in HBO series

Black three-piece suit, bowler hat, detachable collar, violet tie is not the usual dress for a banana.

Second banana, to be exact — a role that Teaneck's Anthony Laciura has spent a lifetime perfecting. "For me personally, choosing to be the second best turned out to be the best," says the singer-actor.

MC 0530F FelaciuraRSTTop banana, in this case, is Steve Buscemi — star of the upcoming HBO series "Boardwalk Empire," the much-anticipated new show (it's set to debut in September) from executive director Martin Scorsese and "Sopranos" writer Terence Winter about the crooks, fixers and wheeler-dealers of 1920s Atlantic City.

"The senator seems to be in a good humor," says Laciura, his accent a courtly German.

"Go check on the room," says the laconic Buscemi, also in detachable collar and violet tie, set off with a red carnation.

"CUT!" says director Brian Kirk.

The scene the two are shooting — and re-shooting, and re-re-shooting — is set in a made-over ballroom in Westchester County, N.Y., tricked out to resemble the upscale Chicago hotel restaurant where Buscemi's character, political fixer Enoch "Nucky" Thompson, is angling to put a Republican senator in his pocket.

Laciura is Eddie Kessler — factotum, valet, gofer and privy counsel to all of Nucky's best-laid schemes. It's a role that fits him like a Coolidge-era suit.

"This is a vintage suit," Laciura says, fingering his jazz-age lapels. "1920. Not made for me. As it turns out, I have a 1920 body."

In the world of grand opera, the character Laciura is playing would be called the "comprimario." Literally, "next to the first." Which is to say, second banana. Sidekick.

It's a stock part that recurs again and again in opera: Le Remendado in "Carmen," Pedrillo in "Abduction From the Seraglio," Goro in "Madama Butterfly."

MC 0530F F1laciura2RSTThese are the kind of roles that Laciura has played in his 27 years at the Metropolitan Opera, where he has acquired a reputation as one of the great "character tenors." "The clown prince of opera!" The Washington Post called him.

"It's a particular gift," says Metropolitan Opera administrator Lenore Rosenberg. "In lesser hands, those roles can go by unnoticed. But you always notice Anthony. He can be funny, he can be touching, he can be old, he can be young, he can be a nobleman, he can be a beggar. And whatever it is, he's always good."

'A miracle' job offer

Scorsese, an opera fan, would know from "comprimarios." It's one reason he cast Laciura — a man with limited "straight" acting experience — in a principal role in a high-profile HBO series, an opportunity that Laciura calls "a miracle."

"You have no idea how happy I am to wake up in the morning," he says. "To my knowledge, I may be one of the few who left [opera] and went on to do theatrical work."

It's true that spoken dialogue is not, typically, Laciura's thing. On the other hand, you could say he's spent his career playing Eddie Kessler.

"It's the same role I've done my whole life in opera, the second banana," he says. "Now I'm doing it without music."

Something else about the "comprimario." Frequently this character is a wise guy, a smart mouth, an earthy foil to the high-flown hero. This, too, is Laciura to a T.

'A miracle' job offer

Scorsese, an opera fan, would know from "comprimarios." It's one reason he cast Laciura — a man with limited "straight" acting experience — in a principal role in a high-profile HBO series, an opportunity that Laciura calls "a miracle."

"You have no idea how happy I am to wake up in the morning," he says. "To my knowledge, I may be one of the few who left [opera] and went on to do theatrical work."

It's true that spoken dialogue is not, typically, Laciura's thing. On the other hand, you could say he's spent his career playing Eddie Kessler.

"It's the same role I've done my whole life in opera, the second banana," he says. "Now I'm doing it without music."

Something else about the "comprimario." Frequently this character is a wise guy, a smart mouth, an earthy foil to the high-flown hero. This, too, is Laciura to a T.

He schmoozes. He cracks jokes. He pulls legs. He tells stories — complete with voices and accents.

Did he tell you the one about Placido Domingo? Seems the great tenor discovered Laciura's 4-year-old son, Christopher, in his dressing room during a production of "Turandot." "We didn't know where Christopher was," Laciura recalls. "Sure enough, he's in Placido's room, playing on the piano. Placido brings him out to me — I was playing the role of Pong — and he says, 'Look — look what I found! Ponguetto!' "

Did he tell you the one about Scorsese?

Even the director of "Goodfellas" and "Raging Bull," who gave Laciura's career its second wind, is fair game. "He gave me a beautiful bottle of 18-year-old Scotch and a beautiful card," Laciura recalls. "So I put some candies in my mouth and I said [Marlon Brando voice], 'Mister Scorsese — I would like to thank you for the bee-you-ti-ful bottle of Scotch. And I hope your next child will be a masculine child.' And he says, 'Oh, Christ.' "

Scorsese might well have moaned — "The Godfather" isn't even his movie.

"He laughs and tells jokes," says his co-star Buscemi ("Reservoir Dogs," "Fargo"), himself one of the great eccentric talents of the screen. "We do things to try to make each other laugh. And sometimes, I have to tell him: Don't do it now, I need to concentrate."

Born in the Big Easy

The conviviality that is Laciura's most pronounced trait ("I come from a long line of b.s.-ers," he says) may have something to do with his native city: New Orleans. "There is this laid-back feeling there," he says. "It could be because of the heat. You can't rush. You'd exhaust yourself."

Spanish, French and Caribbean people, coming in waves and mixing with the local "creoles" and African-Americans gave the Big Easy its unique culture.

Less well known, outside the city, is that Italian immigrants are also a big part of the mix. And opera, in some quarters of the city, is almost as pervasive as jazz.

"The immigration of Italians to New Orleans was just as strong as the immigration to Manhattan," Laciura says.

What he remembers most, from his N'awlins boyhood (he lived there with parents Anthony Sr. and Rosemary, brother Jerry and sisters Pam and Shirley) was a certain easy-breeziness among the locals, the gabbing and schmoozing that was a regular feature of life in the 3rd Ward.

"We lived three blocks from Canal Street, where the streetcar stops," Laciura says. "On the way home, my father stopped to talk to everybody. It would take us a good 30 to 45 minutes to walk three blocks. He was Mr. Tony, and I was Anthony. 'Here comes Mr. Tony and Anthony. How y'all doin', baby?' 'Oh, we doin' fine. How you doin,' Miss Agnes?' 'Oh, we doin' good.' "

These New Orleans types — he can mimic them with pitch-perfect accuracy to this day — were the first in a gallery that became Laciura's stock-in-trade as a performer. When Anthony Jr. wasn't singing, he was watching — and imitating.

"I watched people when I was a kid," he says. "I did impersonations. Jimmy Durante. Louis Armstrong. I watched everybody."

With all those characters under his belt, the choice of becoming a "character tenor" was a no-brainer. Having graduated from soprano boy wonder at Sacred Heart of Jesus Church on Canal Street to opera walk-on (he made his debut, at age 12, in a cameo role in Charpentier's "Louise" at the New Orleans Opera Association) to music student at Loyola and Tulane, he had to make a fateful decision — around age 20 — on the direction of his future singing career.

"One of my mentors, Arthur Cosenza of the New Orleans Opera, said, 'You're going to have a hard choice to make in life, because you'll be able to make money in the beginning if you do character work. If you want to do leading work, it's going to take a longer time for your voice to mature. And you have to consider your height as well.' " (Laciura is 5 feet 7 inches.)

All of which led Laciura to make, on the spot, a bold pronouncement. "If I am going to do character work, if I'm going to be a comprimario, then I want to be in one place — in the Metropolitan Opera. Bang!"

Made debut in 1982

Laciura made his debut at the Metropolitan Opera in the 1982 production of "Der Rosenkavalier." He was 31.

Since then, he has played — by his count — 860 performances in 59 roles, including Monostatos in "The Magic Flute," Basilio in "The Marriage of Figaro," Incredible in "Andrea Chenier," Bardolfo in "Falstaff." He's appeared with Luciano Pavarotti, Kiri Te Kanawa, Jessye Norman and many others.

It was his 1998 performance as Count Hauk-Sendorf in Janacek's "The Makropoulos Case," apparently, that caught the eye of Scorsese, a habitué of The Met. "He saw it, I met him there, it made an impression on him," Laciura says.

When Scorsese's people called his people, in early 2009, to see if Laciura "could do a German accent," he appeared at auditions wearing a three-piece suit, a pocket watch, a linen handkerchief and the stickpin he always wore in "The Merry Widow."

"I said, 'It's a grrrrreat honor and pleasure to be here to have de opportunity to try for a role for zis incredible production, and to work for za great Martin Scorsese. I'm thrilldt and excited.' And they said, 'Mr. Laciura, what part of Germany are you from?' And I said, 'the South Bronx!' "

Ready for change

Eddie Kessler (he's based on a real-life Atlantic City character named Louis Kessel) comes at an opportune juncture for Laciura.

In 2007, the singer was ready to move on from The Met. His last role was The Idiot in "Wozzeck." "I didn't even have to act," he says. "I just had a spasm onstage, and I got a check."

In recent years the tenor, who moved to Teaneck 24 years ago with his wife, Joel — pronounced Joe-elle — and son, has been concentrating more on behind-the-scenes work: as a music teacher and opera director, though of a distinctly Laciura-esque sort. A recent "Magic Flute" he staged for New Jersey City University, where he's taught since 2008, resembled "The Sopranos." "Sarastro looks like Tony Soprano," he says. "Everybody has a gun."

To be his old second-banana self in a brand-new medium has been a delightful coda to Laciura's career. "To begin all over again with 'Boardwalk Empire' — what an opportunity!" Laciura says.

Not that opera and TV are the same thing, of course.

In opera, you get encores. On a studio set, like the Westchester location where Laciura and Buscemi are doing their hotel scene for the ninth time, you get retakes.

And retakes. And retakes.

"The senator seems to be in a good humor," says Laciura.

"Go check on the room," Buscemi says.

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