New owners at Ancram Opera House

ANCRAM — As of last month, Jeffrey Mousseau and Paul Ricciardi are the new owners of the Ancram Opera House.

The building at 1330 Country Route 7 was built early last century as the Ancram Grange — a meeting place for local farmers to convene, according to Ricciardi.

In the 1970s, The Grange was converted into the Ancram Opera House and has since seen ownership change several hands, second-to-most recently by Joan Arnold and James Paul, who acquired it in 2002.

After 13 years, the couple decided to pass the torch. Living in Brooklyn full time, Arnold continues to teach yoga — a program she’ll miss dearly at the opera house — while Paul teaches creative writing at Hunter College.

It was during Arnold and Paul’s era that Mousseau and Ricciardi, both Hudson residents, first came to the Ancram Opera House. 

“Our relationship with the opera house began back in 2007 when we saw a play there and were really taken by the space,” Ricciardi said during an interview with The Millerton News.

The play, he recalled, was “The Turn of the Screw.”

When the opera house appeared on the market, the duo — Mousseau a writer/producer and Ricciardi an actor — knew they had to do something about it.

That “something” took the form of an offer to purchase the property, and over Labor Day weekend the transaction was finalized.

Now, Ricciardi and Mousseau are in midst of what they’re calling their “planning period,” with ambition to reopen theater productions in June of 2016.

“Our primary focus is theater, that’s our life,” Mousseau said. “Our major project is to bring more and more theater into the opera house.”

Ricciardi explained that performing arts were part of The Grange hall movement. 

“And that means a lot to us,” he said. “The Grange history is inspiring to us.”

The duo plans to perpetuate the building’s functionality as a meeting place — somewhere the community can convene and create connections through performance and art.

An open house is preliminarily scheduled over Thanksgiving weekend. For more information, go to www.ancramoperahouse.org to sign up for updates via an online mailing list.

The Ancram Opera House can be reached at 518-329-0114.