Making NYC Opera Accessible, One Performance at a Time

Greg Moomjy became “hooked” on opera at just 2 years old, after his caregiver introduced him to a classic musical CD made for children. When asked how many operas he’s been to since, he referred to the list he kept until last fall.

“What’s funny is that I’m not the only one who keeps a list. It goes to show you that there are real nerds in the opera world,” he said, laughing.

“At last count, it was 489.”

Moomjy, 33, who was born with Cerebral Palsy and uses a wheelchair, knew he wanted to pursue a career in opera, but resigned himself to the fact that he could never be a performer, so got his bachelor’s degree in musicology at Fordham. Then, he furthered his education by earning a master’s in journalism from Columbia. “The goal was to be an opera critic,” he said.

The Tenafly, NJ native, who now lives on the Upper East Side, explained that for disabled arts enthusiasts like himself, it is not always easy to attend performances in the city.

“There are a lot of people in the disability community who really enjoy the performing arts and have a meaningful relationship to them but they can’t really see as much as they’d like to,” he said.

“Even something as simple as transportation, sometimes needs to be arranged days in advance. I’ve been to Broadway shows and I can’t sit with disabled friends of mine, and we can’t even sit together just because of the way the handicapped accessible seating is.”

In 2022, he co-founded Opera Praktikos [OPrak], New York’s first disability-affirmative opera company, with the help of Marianna Mott Newirth, who serves as executive producer, with the idea that everyone in their lifetime will deal with a disability of some sort.

Their second production, “There Will Be Cake!” – a matinee mono-opera concert series – will take place from December 12 to 14 at Asylum NYC on East 24th Street, a venue with ample handicapped accessibility, which is not always easy to find in Manhattan. Hailey McAvoy, a mezzo-soprano with Cerebral Palsy and Spicer Carr, an autistic writer, are part of the production, the company’s second after their May 2022 performance of George Handel’s “Orlando.”

How did you get so passionate about opera? Are your parents opera fans?

No, not at all. Although my parents did end up going to the opera when my mother was very, very pregnant with me. She was bored by it apparently. It’s just one of those funny coincidences. How I got into it was an aide of mine, a caregiver, when I was 2 years old, had this CD series called “Classics for Kids” and they would take a classic musical work, like “The Four Seasons” by Vivaldi, and put a cute little story around it. And there was one called “Mozart’s Magic Fantasy,” based off of “The Magic Flute,” and there was a story on it told from the point of view of a little girl who was the daughter of someone playing the Queen of the Night. And I was just hooked, particularly when I heard the Queen of the Night, which is a very high soprano. That was that.

Which operas are your favorites?

I can name several favorites. They’re all standard classic ones. Just a few of them are “La Traviata,” “La Boheme,” “Tosca,” “Rigoletto,” some of which I want to do at Opera Praktikos at some point because part of the mission, at least for me, is to reimagine these classic works from a disability lens. And something like “Rigoletto,” is about a court jester with a birth defect. It would be great to do a work like that and cast a performer who’s actually disabled.

You went to Fordham and studied music.

I went to Fordham because by that point, I was rather lucky because I knew I wanted to be involved in opera. But my problem was I did not want to have a performing career because I didn’t think I could. That was way back before I started doing what I’m currently doing. Based off of my conversations with the Tenafly High School music department, several of whom I’m still friends with, I decided to go into musicology that way I could study about it and write about it without having to perform. That’s why I went to Fordham; it was the only music program that did not prepare you for a performing career.

How did the idea for Opera Praktikos come about?

Over COVID, Marianna had met this singer Jeffrey Mandelbaum, a countertenor. They decided to do an abridgement of Handel’s opera “Orlando.” She got me on the project as a co-producer and it was originally supposed to be just a nice thing to put on a resume. But we would talk every day, and at one point one of us said that we need to start an opera company.

What did you want the company’s mission to be?

I’m the one who said if we do start one, we need a very specific mission, because New York has a thriving opera scene. It’s not just the Met, there are many other smaller companies that do great work. There’s such variety. And it’s because of that variety that we need a very specific mission and we need to look for a unique way of presenting our product.

Around that time, funny enough, and this is weird for me to say out loud, given the fact that I’ve been disabled all of my life, I was coming into my own as a disabled adult and really exploring the identity and what that means to me. So I had this crazy idea that we should make it with disability, inclusivity, creativity, artistry, ... making sure all the performers have what they need to do their best work and work with their disability and make it part of their performance. Every year, Marianna and I go to Opera America’s Opera Conference, and this year, in LA, it was the first time that I’ve gone where I’ve not been the only disabled person there. I met several of them and we all had lunch together one day. It’s great because it shows that OPrak is at the right place at the right time.

Are disabled and abled people performing in the shows?

Yes. For me, as artistic director, what is important above all, is that every show we do incorporates disability in some way. Not necessarily everyone on the production team, but obviously the more disabled creatives we have the better – whether it’s the singers, the composer, librettist, if it’s a new work, costume designers, directors.

What can audiences expect from “There Will Be Cake?”

First and foremost, there will be cake and Fluffernutter sandwiches afterwards, and they can bond over the great music. Second of all, and this is more important than the cake, although the cake is very important, it’s something much deeper. It’s using food as a way to explore breaking down traditions and the standard way of doing things. Julia Child was famous for taking French cuisine, which was thought of as untouchable, and showing people that they could do it on their own with what they had and she wasn’t afraid to make mistakes.

To learn more, visit www.operapraktikos.org