"The Telephone and The Medium chamber operas on 22 May
News публикувана на: 16.05.2018
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22 May, 20.00, Antique Street Stage - Regional History Museum Stara Zagora
Gian Carlo Menotti
"The Telephone" and "The Medium"
A joint production of NMA "Prof. Pancho Vladigerov" and
State Opera-Stara Zagora
Arrangement Viktor Krumov and Petar Tuleshkov
Conductors Viktor Krumov and Petar Tuleshkov
Participating students from Ognyan Draganov's acting class
Piano accompanist Evelina Stanchovska
Chamber Orchestra of State Opera-Stara Zagora
"The Telephone" or " L,amour a trois" , is a comic opera in one act to text and music by Gian Carlo Menotti.It was written for a production of the "Ballet Society" and was first presented in one poster together with "The Medium" at the Heckscher Theatre, New York, 18-20 February 1947. On Broadway it was performed on May 1, 1947, at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre, and there was one performance at the Metropolitan Opera on July 31, 1965.The opera was filmed for Austrian television in 1956 , and the American production in 1988 starred Whoopi Goldberg
Synopsis
Ben,bearing a gift, comes to visit Lucy at her apartment. He wants to propose marriage to her before she leaves on a trip.Despite his attempts to get her attention,it is a long time before he pops the question.Lucy is constantly busy with endless phone calls. In between conversations,when Lucy leaves the room,Ben even tries to cut the phone cord,but his attempt is unsuccessful.Not wanting to miss his train,Ben leaves without being able to ask for Lucy's hand. But he decides to make one last attempt by phoning her from a street booth and finally manages to propose marriage.She agrees and the two engage in a romantic duet over the phone line, at the end of which Lucy thanks him for remembering her phone number!
Actors and performers
Lucy - Veselina Andreeva
Ben - Hovhannes Kasparyan
"The Medium" is a short /one hour/ dramatic opera in two acts to text and music by Gian Carlo Menotti.The first professional production of the opera was the joint performance with the opera "The Telephone" in February 1947 in New York by the Ballet Society. In 1951, the company premiered a new work, The Ballet. Menotti directed, with the help of director Alexander Hamid, a film version resembling " black cinema", starring Anna Maria Albergetti. On 12 December 1948, a television production starring Marie Paurs also appeared on the Studio 1 television channel.
The opera was also filmed for Austrian television.
Synopsis
Menotti's " Meduim " is something of a lived story, which has its genesis in a séance in which the composer himself participated.The plot of the libretto unfolds as follows:
Living in conditions close to squalor, Madame Flora /Baba/ presents herself as Medouim and together with her daughter, Monica,summons spirits from the Afterlife.She takes Toby, who is mute, as a lodger, but does not have much confidence in him. Business is good until one day, during a séance, she feels a cold hand clutching her throat. Grandma is horrified. When clients come again the next day, she admits it was all a hoax and a forgery, and even demonstrates her tricks to them, but they don't believe her and insist it was all true and they heard the voices of their deceased loved ones, not that of her daughter Monica.So she sends them away and decides to evict Toby too, just in case. When Toby unexpectedly returns she shoots and kills him without asking. Eventually she is left to wonder if it was Toby?
Actors and performers
Monica - Alicia Tomova, Lachezara Georgieva
Toby - Alicia Tomova, Lachezara Georgieva
Madame Flora / Grandmother - Ioana Kadijska, Yana Uzunova
Miss Gubino - Yana Stefanova
Mr. Gubino- Hovhannes Kasparyan
Miss Nolan -Vyara Todorova
Puppets - actors from Stara Zagora State Theatre
Gian Carlo Menotti
/July 7, 1911, Cadeliano, Italy - February 1, 2007, New York, USA/
Gian-Carlo Menotti was born on July 7, 1911 in Cadeliano, Italy. He studied music at the Milan Conservatory. In 1927 he went to the United States and continued his musical education in Philadelphia. At first he began to write in the field of chamber music.
He won his first major success with the opera Amalia Goes to the Ball in 1937. In this work one can feel the strong Italian influence, above all from the Versti , and from Puccini. Later the composer came to create his own style, but in all his works the spirit of Italian operatic music is felt. His popularity gradually became greater and greater, and he won worldwide fame with his opera The Consul.
In 1954 he was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for his opera The Saint of Bleecker Street.
Affectionately called "The Mad Maestro" by the people of Spoleto, Menotti almost single-handedly put the medieval mountain town in Umbria on the international cultural map and saved it from ruin by founding the Two Worlds Festival in 1958. The aim of the festival is to bring together young artists from Italy and America. Today, the Spoleto Festival attracts tens of thousands of people a year. It has helped launch the careers of Rudolf Nureyev and Carla Fracci, of Pier Paolo Pasolini and Evgeny Yevtushenko, of Al Pacino.
In the 1960s, playwright Tennessee Williams, ballerina Margot Fonteyn and film director Luchino Visconti came to Menotti's aid in Spoleto.
In 1977, the composer repeated his recipe, founding a "twin" at the Spoleto Festival in Charleston, South Carolina, and in 1986 in Melbourne, Australia.
Gian-Carlo Menotti is one of America's best-known contemporary opera composers. He has written a large number of operas, almost all of which have been performed with success in many American and European opera houses. The composer has also produced a significant body of work in the field of radio opera and, especially, television opera. These are very frequently heard in various performances on radio stations and have been broadcast by many television stations. His more significant musical and stage works are The Old Maid and the Thief (1939), The Medium (1946) - performed in this country by the Blagoevgrad Chamber Opera in 1980, The Telephone (1947) - performed in Sofia in 1968, "The Consul (1950) - performed in Plovdiv in 1963, The Saint of Bleecker Street (1954), Maria Golovina (1958), The Last Savage (1963), Martin Li (1965), The Most Important Man (1971), etc. He also wrote operas for children, of which the most popular is "Help, Help!". The most successful of Gian-Carlo Menotti's television operas are Amalia and the Night Visitors and Labyrinth . The composer has also created various works in other genres, which are relatively less successful. The appeal of his operas is primarily due to the interesting plots - often contemporary - the masterly and dramatic structure and the brightly melodic, accessible and compelling music. Menotti possessed a distinguished literary talent and wrote the librettos of all his operas himself. He even wrote librettos for other composers, for example the opera Vanessa by Samuel Barber . Menotti often did his own productions as conductor, director and stage designer.
"The New York Times called Menotti "the most frequently staged opera composer in the United States".