Reconciliation Caruso: Neopolitan Tunes May 16 at the Long Wharf

Aaron Caruso says his gifts for singing, and the equally demanding talent of making a crowd comfortable with between-song banter, come to him naturally. So does his surname; imagine being an Italian singer born with the name Caruso.

Of course, that name, Aaron Caruso told me in a phone interview last night, means “there’s lots to live up to.” So does being part of Connecticut’s thriving Italian community. The pressure’s on.

But Caruso, who grew up in Detroit, moved to Connecticut a decade ago and also keeps an apartment in New York, was never fazed. “This is the Italian music I love. I was always involved with the music. I started on piano, got a degree in opera, had classical voice training, and made a career out of it.”

Caruso did an all-operatic set in a New York club just night. (Our phone chat happened while he was waiting in his car so he could feed the parking at just the right time.) Tonight (Friday, May 13) he’s at Festa della Mamma at Antonio’s in East Haven.

Monday the 16^th is a special gig for theatergoers. Caruso will give a full concert on the very stage where Long Wharf is presenting Italian–American Reconciliation, John Patrick Shanley’s romantic comedy about a lovestruck mope and his devoted friend. The play is not performed on Mondays, so Caruso has the stage to himself for a 7 p.m. show that’s been arranged to augment the Italian-American vibe of the drama. Tickets are $20. Details here.

“I’m really honored to be on that stage,” Caruso coos. The Long Wharf was tipped to Caruso by Val Capobianco, who runs Brazi’s restaurant just down the food terminal dock from the theater. (Brazi’s proved to be the perfect location for Italian-American Reconciliation’s opening night party last week, and this past Monday Capobianco was given a Founders Award by Long Wharf for his contributions to the theater over the years.)

Not only does he respect the room, he knows how to command it. ““The majority of Italians in New Haven are from Naples, and I specialize in that music. It’s a perfect fit.” Amusingly, the stage is dressed to look like a VFW Hall where a large Italian wedding has just been held. (The photos on the walls of the set are of folks from the area, part of an outreach to the Italian-American community the Long Wharf did when setting up the show.) Caruso laughs that it’ll look like the kind of places he played when he was starting out.

“For the Long Wharf,” Caruso continues,”I’m going to stick with that Italian-American theme—a nice mix of Neopolitan songs, maybe some standards made famous by Dan Martin or Jerry Vale or Mario Lanza.”

Rousing stuff. The audience will be expected to clap or sing along on a chorus or two, which—if they’re anything like the audience for the play on opening night—will participate without hesitation. Director Eric Ting’s concept for the play involves a lengthy improvisational audience-warm-up stint for actor John Proccacino, who’s the leading actor in the piece despite being a supporting player in its main plot.

Aaron Caruso been so busy performing elsewhere—he’s a  headliner at major Italian festivals around the country, and regularly sings in Reno and Atlantic City—that he hasn’t been able to see Italian-American Reconciliation yet. “I have two friends who already saw the play and loved it. I’m dying to see it.” It’s imperative since Caruso another John Patrick Shanley opus, the writer’s Oscar-winning movie Moonstruck, which is set around many of the same themes as Italian-American Reconciliation. “I’m a huge Moonstruck fan. I know all the lines. Vincent Gardenia”—the beloved character actor who played Cher’s grumpy, adulterous dad in Moonstruck, and who died in 1992—“used to do the same festival and concert circuit I do today, and his father did it before him.”

“We all have to find out particular niche,” Aaron Caruso says, “to make what we do special and be part of a community.” That’s what Italian-American Reconciliation’s about, too. Enjoy the musical soundtrack Monday.