Anton Coppola to Opera Tampa and the music world at large, and specifically for extraordinary work in the cultivation and care of the operatic art form. Coppola himself was recipient of the award in 2012, the year of his retirement. Anton Coppola Antonio Francesco Coppola (born March 21, 1917) is an American opera conductor and composer. He is the uncle of film director Francis Ford Coppola and actress Talia Shire, as well as the grand-uncle of Nicolas Cage, Sofia Coppola, Gian-Carlo Coppola, Jason Schwartzman and Robert Schwartzman, and is the younger brother of American composer and musician Carmine Coppola. Coppola started his
Francis Ford Coppola Henry Ford, not only because he was born in the Henry Ford Hospital but also because of his musician-father's association with the automobile manufacturer. At the time of Coppola's birth, his father was a flautist as well as arranger and assistant orchestra director for "The Ford Sunday Evening Hour", an hour-long concert music radio series sponsored by the Ford Motor Company. Two years after Coppola's birth, his father was named principal flautist for the NBC Symphony Orchestra, and the family moved to New York, settling in Woodside, Queens, where Coppola spent the remainder of his childhood. Having contracted polio as