The name Franc D’Ambrosio is synonymous with “The Phantom of the Opera,” and the lead role in Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Tony Award-winning musical. D’Ambrosio performed as the famed masked man more than 2,100 times during his six-and-a-half-year run in the San Francisco production before passing the torch. But the man behind the mask possesses a star power and charisma so expansive that his appeal transcends well beyond lovers of opera or musical theater.
Singer, actor, storyteller, philanthropist, educator, painter, baker — the Renaissance man D’Ambrosio will return to the Bankhead Theater stage on Friday, Dec. 5 to give a benefit concert for the Livermore Valley Opera (LVO). Well before his rise to Phantom stardom, D’Ambrosio captivated audiences in his first movie role, as the opera-singing Anthony Corleone, son of Al Pacino and Diane Keaton’s characters in the seven-time Academy Award-nominated film “The Godfather, Part III” (1990).
