Joseph Pucciatti

Trenton-born educator, conductor and lecturer, Joseph Pucciatti has conducted many of opera’s masterworks for the main stage.  A graduate of Trenton State College (now The College of New Jersey), he is a career music teacher completing 41 years with the Trenton Board of Education.  He was Music Director of the Greater Trenton Choral Society for 17 years before retiring from that position in 2008 and continues to direct the Congregation Beth Chaim Choir of Princeton Junction, currently completing 39 years. In 1989, he founded Boheme Opera Company with his wife/colleague Sandra Milstein-Pucciatti.  He has been host of Boheme Opera’s Pre-Curtain Talks, as well as creator of scripts and music adaptations of the company’s periodic Inside Opera Program.  During his career on the podium, he has conducted 50 opera productions and 32 oratorio presentations.  In 2008, he made his debut as an opera stage director with a cutting-edge production of Verdi’s Rigoletto.  He has been recognized with a Governor’s Teacher Recognition Award and has been honored by the Italian American National Hall of Fame and Princeton Friends of Opera.  He and his wife Sandra were the recipients of the 2002 Italian-American Society of Monroe Township Columbus Award and The Trenton Community Music School—now Trenton Music Makers--honored both in 2005.  In 2008, Joseph became Director of the Choir at Our Lady of the Angels Parish in Trenton.  He is a tremendous catalyst in attracting young people to witness and participate in Boheme Opera’s main stage and outreach events, and as an urban career music teacher, has often given life-changing opportunities to inner city youth.

In 1993, he founded the award-winning Trenton Central High School Orchestra from which he retired in July of 2023. A busy performance ensemble in the region, the Orchestra was nominated for an Educational Grammy in 2018. Through Joseph’s efforts, the ensemble has continued to perform periodically at the Rockefeller School on Princeton University’s campus throughout the past eight years in a collaboration with the Princeton University Music Department Orchestra – collectively named Trenton Arts at Princeton.  In January of 2019, the TCHS Orchestra performed for Maestro Gustavo Dudamel as part of his residency at Princeton that year. Maestro Dudamel is the world-renowned Conductor and Music Director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic and made his conducting debut at New York’s Metropolitan Opera with Verdi’s Otello.  Joseph was nominated as County Teacher of the Year by the New Jersey Department of Education 2018-2019 Governor’s Educator of the Year Program. In 2021, Joseph was awarded The Community Engagement Award by The Pace Center for Civic Engagement of Princeton University.  In 2023, Princeton University established a new prize: the Joseph Pucciatti Prize for Community Engagement in the Arts. The prize will be awarded annually to a graduating Princeton University senior whose love of community, artistic imagination, and passion for mentorship – all qualities embodied by Joseph – have expanded access to the arts.