His final major staging was of "Don Pasquale", in 1977. In 1965, Cosenza became the New Orleans Opera's resident stage director, and, in 1970, was appointed general and artistic director, a position he held until 1998. Afterwards, he was director emeritus until his death. Cosenza also produced opera in Hartford, Houston, Pittsburgh, and at the Philadelphia Lyric and the Jackson Opera Guild ("Faust", with Treigle as Mephisto). He founded the Opera Workshop at Loyola University of the South in 1954, where he taught until 1984. He was appointed Knight of the Order of the Star of Italian Sodality, as well as Officer of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres. In 1966, his staging of the Sextet from "Lucia di Lammermoor" was seen on the Bell Telephone Hour's "Sights and Sounds of New Orleans," with Gianna d'Angelo, Domingo, Enzo Sordello, Thomas Paul, Bennie Ray, and Linda Neumann, conducted by Knud Andersson. Mr Cosenza, widowed since 1996, died at the age of eighty-one, was survived by two sons and a daughter, and was buried in Metairie Cemetery.