CELEB CRIBS
LA VIE EN ROSE Opera star Nedda Casei reflects on the years spent in her $5M Italianate-inspired home BY ZACHARY KUSSIN
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edda Casei, the legendary mezzo-soprano who performed with the Metropolitan Opera for more than two decades, surrounds herself with music. Nowadays, the 81-year-old teaches seven international career opera singers — they make trips to NYC for intensive, weeklong lessons — and hosts the occasional recital, all within her capacious living room. It’s really a shame her neighbors can’t hear anything: Casei’s Classic 7 co-op is fully soundproofed. Even without singing, Casei — whose credits include the title role in “Carmen” and Suzuki in “Madama Butterfly” — enchants visitors with her soothing voice. Tall, blonde and slender, she moves through her home with grace and a confident stride, much like she would an opera set. Casei takes pride in showing off the home that she created — a space with color and charm to match her grand and gregarious personality. The apartment looks quite different then it did in 1992, when she bought it. The interior was a “wreck,” she said, and one of the terraces had structural issues. But the place was a bargain (though she declined to disclose the price) and, at the time, Casei
was looking for a fresh start. Her husband had died and she had sold a big apartment at 980 Fifth Avenue. She wanted a smaller space, with outdoor areas being the main priority. But several months after her purchase, Casei received an offer to work in Japan as a visiting professor; for the next two years, she split her time between locations. “I didn’t really get a chance to move in,” she said. She began the renovation in 1995, an intensive process that went on for approximately three to four years, she said. The home’s library — a stunning, academia-chic room with rows of wooden bookshelves and a large desk that faces a window — was the first target. She wanted the room to feature lots of wood, to have it resemble a real library where she could store her books and music scores. And there was more. Casei wanted beamed ceilings, so her contractor went to the Brooklyn Navy Yard, where he got pillars that were previously used in the water and installed them throughout. She also wanted wooden floors; the contractor traveled down to the Carolinas to get the flooring from an old home that was being dismantled. The remainder of the wood was used for the ceilings. These combined additions helped soundproof the space.
A portrait of Casei at 22, when she was just beginning her career, hangs over her bed.
“Along the way, it’s been building itself,” she said of her home. “It’s like a painter painting a painting. You add a stroke here and suddenly you see you should have something over here — and it’s the same way with the apartment.” Other steps of the redesign included widening the kitchen and creating arched entryways to connect the rooms, which give an airy, European-style feel. Casei refers to the spread as her “Italian villa,” and the look pays homage to the 11 years that she spent living in Italy, during which time she made her operatic debut, first in Brussels in 1960 and at La Scala in Milan that same year. Following her 1964 premiere at the Met, she traveled back and forth between America and Europe. She performed at the Met for 22 years, until 1986. “I had probably acquired more of an Italianate European influence,” she said of the design, which embraces a prominent color palate. The walls, furniture, rugs and linens sport a mélange of rich Rococo-style pink, red and purple tones. The walls are predominately peachy-pink in color; hidden pockets flash other colors. The kitchen is red with red accessories and her dressing room is similarly hued — it’s a space she calls “Red Room.” On the dining
Salvaged wood is used throughout. The apartment has two large, verdant, L-shaped terraces.
Photo courtesy of StreetEasy
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Luxury Listings NYC | March/April 2014
Photo courtesy of StreetEasy