About David Cote
David Cote is an opera librettist, playwright and critic based in New York City.
Recent operas include: Blind Injustice at Lincoln Center’s Rose Theater, and Lucidity—world premiere by On Site Opera in NYC followed by its Northwest premiere at Seattle Opera. Lucidity is heading to La Monnaie in Brussels in 2027.
Plays include The Müch, Saint Joe, and Aristotle Punches Down (National Playwrights Conference semifinalist).
Previous operas include Blind Injustice for Cincinnati Opera; Three Way at Nashville Opera and BAM; The Scarlet Ibis at the Prototype festival; and We’ve Got Our Eye on You (SUNY New Paltz) and 600 Square Feet (Cleveland Opera Theater), the last two with composer Nkeiru Okoye. David also wrote the text for Okoye’s Black Lives Matter piece for baritone and orchestra, Invitation to a Die-In. Other vocal pieces: Cocoa Cantata (a sequel to Bach’s Coffee Cantata), composed by Robert Paterson, and dating-app song cycles with Paterson, In Real Life. Recordings: Blind Injustice (NAXOS), Three Way (American Modern Recordings) and In Real Life (AMR). Individual acts from Three Way have been presented by companies across the country, including Opera Memphis, Opera Orlando, Shreveport Opera, and Fargo Moorhead Opera.
David was born and adopted in New Hampshire and lives in Manhattan. He has been honored with residencies at Yaddo, MacDowell, Ucross, the Helene Wurlitzer Foundation, and elsewhere. He was selected for the inaugural year of the Ecker Fellowship, in which the New England Foundation for Psychoanalysis pairs artists with psychoanalysts. Proud alumnus of Bard College.
As an actor, David worked with Richard Foreman (Pearls for Pigs); exiled Iranian auteur Assurbanipal Babilla; and Richard Maxwell, Robert Cucuzza and D.J. Mendel, among others. He directed Babilla's acclaimed monologue Something Something Über Alles (Das Jackpot) for its world premiere, and the 2013 revival with Robert Honeywell, co-founder of Williamsburg’s Brick Theater. He also directed Honeywell in Matthew Freeman’s monologue, The Sea The Mountains The Forest The City The Plain at the Brick.
As a journalist, David’s TV and theater reviews appear in The A.V. Club, Observer, 4 Columns, American Theatre and elsewhere. He was the longest serving theater editor and chief drama critic of Time Out New York. His writing has also appeared in Opera News, The Village Voice, The Guardian, and The New York Times. He’s the author of companion books about the Broadway hits Moulin Rouge! The Musical, Wicked, Jersey Boys and Spring Awakening.
For the Best Plays Yearbook series, David contributed essays on Shining City, Blackbird and The Receptionist. In the 1990s, he co-founded and edited the grassroots theater magazines OFF: a journal of alternative theater and EdgeNY.