The Medium--UNC Memorial Hall--Fri., June 20, 8pm; Sun., June 22, 2pm
In Memory of One of Our Great Composers Gian Carlo Menotti
A two-act dramatic opera
In the parlor of the medium, Madame Flora, Monica, her daughter, and Toby, a mute servant boy rescued from "the streets of Budapest" play dress-up. When Madame Flora, or "Baba" as they call her, arrives home drunk, she violently chastises them for not preparing for that night's seance. Soon the guests arrive, Mr. and Mrs. Gobineau, regulars, and the widow Mrs. Nolan who is attending for the first time. With Madame Flora in a trance in her chair, a fake seance is held where Mrs. Nolan speaks with what she thinks is her deceased sixteen-year-old daughter but is really Monica behind a screen. As Monica disappears, Mrs. Nolan rushes to toward the figure and is restrained by the Gobineaus. When order is restored, Mr. and Mrs. Gobineau "communicate" with their deceased two year old son Mickey who does nothing but laugh. After they say goodbye to him, Madame Flora "suddenly, with a loud gasp... clutches at her throat with both hands." She feels a phantom hand clutching her throat and is "terror-stricken." After demanding that the guests leave, she calls for Monica and tells her what she felt, eventually blaming Toby who was in the other room the whole time. In an effort to calm Baba's drunken rage toward Toby, Monica sings her the dark lullaby "O Black Swan" which is interrupted by a voice that Baba hears causing her to fly into a terrified rage at Toby for not telling her where the voice is coming from. The Curtain comes down on Monica again singing the lullaby while Baba recites her Hail Marys.
"A few days later" Toby is giving a puppet show for Monica, their mutual love becomes more obvious. When Baba comes home, she resumes her accusations on Toby, sure that he knows what went on that night. The guests again arrive, expecting another seance but are driven away by Madame Flora who tries to convince them that the whole thing was a sham by revealing all the tricks that she and Monica used. But the guests are not convinced and leave claiming that while she might have thought she was cheating them, she in fact was not. Once the guests are gone, she drives Toby out despite Monica's pleas on his behalf. With everyone gone, and Monica in her room, Baba pours herself another drink and questions her own sanity, becoming wild with drink and eventually passing out. Once she has fallen asleep, Toby sneaks back in and tries to get into Monica's room, but finds it locked and eventually goes to the trunk to find his tambourine. While searching, he knocks the lid of the trunk down waking Baba. Toby quickly hides in the puppet theater. As Baba tries to see where the noise came from and fetches a revolver from a drawer in the table. "Hysterically" she shouts out "Who is it? Speak or I'll Shoot!" and the puppet theater curtain moves. "Baba screams and fires at it several times." As Toby's bloody body collapses grasping the curtain, Baba says "I've killed the ghost! I've killed the ghost!" Monica, hearing the gunshots, enters, sees Toby's lifeless body and runs for help. As the final curtain falls "very slowly" Baba asks "in a hoarse whisper," "Was it you?"
History of the "The Medium"
The Medium was commissioned by the Alice M. Ditson Fund of Columbia University. The World Premiere production took place at Columbia University on May 8, 1946 at the Brader Matthews Theater.
Composer Gian Carlo Menotti
Born in Italy on the the Swiss border, Gian Carlo Menotti began writing songs when he was seven years old, and at eleven wrote both the libretto and music for his first opera, The Death of Pierrot. He began his formal musical training at Milan's Verdi Conservatory in 1923.
After the death of his father, Menotti and his mother emigrated to the United States, and he enrolled at Philadelphia's Curtis Institute of Music with Fellow students at Curtis included Leonard Bernstein and Samuel Barber. The latter became Menotti's partner in life and in work, with Menotti crafting the libretto for Barber's most famous opera, Vanessa which premiered in 1958 at the Metropolitan Opera. It was at Curtis that Menotti wrote his first mature opera, Amelia Al Ballo (Amelia Goes to the Ball), to his own Italian text. The Island God (which he suppressed, though its libretto was printed by the Metropolitan Opera and can be found in many libraries) and The Last Savage were the only other operas he wrote in Italian, the rest being in English. Like Wagner, he wrote the libretti of all his operas. His most successful works were composed in the 1940s and 1950s. Menotti also taught at the Curtis Institute of Music.
In 1958, he founded the Festival of Two Worlds in Spoleto, Italy and its companion festival in Charleston, SC in 1977. For three weeks each summer, Spoleto is visited by nearly a half-million people. These festivals were intended to bring opera to a popular audience and helped launch the careers of such artists as choreographers Paul Taylor and Twyla Tharp. He left Spoleto USA in 1993 to take the helm of the Rome Opera.
In 1984 Menotti was awarded the Kennedy Center Honor for achievement in the arts, and in 1991 was chosen Musical America's "Musician of the Year". In addition to composing operas to his own texts, on his own chosen subject matter, Menotti directed most productions of his work. Menotti died on February 1, 2007 at the age of 95 in a hospital in Monte Carlo, Monaco.