Organization

Singer

Contralto

Irina Berezina

Madame Flora (Baba)

Plastic production Assistant

Elizaveta Muravyeva

Stage director

Alexander Molochnikov

Conductor

Alexey Vereshchagin

Lighting designer

Aivar Salikhov

Costume designer

Maria Danilova

Set designer

Sergei Tchoban

Agnia Sterligova

Choreographer

Soprano

Ekaterina Ferzba

Lucy England

Tamara Kasumova

Tatiana Koninskaya

Natalia Ritter

Baritone

Vasily Sokolov

Ben Upthegrove

Azamat Tsaliti

Olga Deineka-Boston

Victoria Preobrazhenskaya

Monica

Silent

Valery Makarov

Toby

Askar Nigamedzyanov

Alexandra Mayskaya

Mrs Gobineau

Alexandra Nanoshkina

Tat'jana Fedotova

Alexander Polkovnikov

Mr Gobineau

Roman Shevchuk

Mezzo-soprano

Ekaterina Bolshakova

Mrs Nolan

Zlata Rubinova

Anna Semenyuk

Robot

Sergey Choban

Assistant Director

Tatiana Mitkaleva

Assistant Conductor

Roman Denisov

Bolshoi Theatre

English

The Medium

Moscow

Russia

Boris Pokrovsky Chamber Stage of the Bolshoi Theater

PHONE. MEDIUM: The Telephone Menotti (+1 More)

Public

The Telephone

Russian

Approved

The Medium Menotti (+1 More)

The one-act opera "Medium" by Gian Carlo Menotti was first presented by an amateur troupe on May 8, 1946 on the stage of the Brander Matthews Theater at Columbia University. For the next season, the composer "on the principle of contrast" - as a cheerful and cheerful prelude to it - composed a one-act opera "Telephone" (full title "Telephone, or Love for Three"). The "common" premiere of the two operas took place on February 18, 1947 at new York's Heckscher Theater. The success was unprecedented, paving the way for these operas on Broadway.

A couple of months later, on May 1, 1947, the premiere took place at the Ethel Barrymore Theater in Broadway. This time, however, the performances ran for several days in front of half-empty halls. Until the advertisement was done by Arturo Toscanini, the "number one" conductor in the United States. He didn't just attend the show, he came to it several times! All subsequent performances (and there were more than twenty of them only in the 1947-48 season!) were already sold out. Soon, both "Telephone" and "Medium" became very popular in the United States. Three years after the Broadway premiere in Rome, an opera film based on Medium was shot, which won an award at the Cannes Film Festival. In theaters, these operas are staged both in pairs and separately. "Telephone" sounded in Milan, Edinburgh, Ghent, San Francisco, "Medium" 3/4 in Toronto, Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, Munich ... In Russia, operas were staged "separately": in 1978, "Telephone" was performed for the first time in Kazan, and in 1979 in Leningrad on the stage of the Maly Opera and Ballet Theater (now Mikhailovsky) - "Medium".

The key to the popularity of Menotti's operas were unusual and modern librettos (they were written by the composer himself) and music devoid of any academic "rigorism", written easily, wittily and ironically, with a masterful command of the orchestra and a natural sense of singing voices for a composer born in Italy. (The style of vocal parts in Menotti's operas, which is related to both the comic Italian operas of the eighteenth century and the musical, is comparable, for example, to Bernstein's "Candide").

The plot outline of the "Telephone" is formed by the communication of two lovers, constantly interrupted by chatter on the phone. An agitated and timid gentleman finds the only way to propose to his lady: he calls from a pay phone booth to break through the queue of people who want to communicate with her. The short story ends with a duet of consent and happy end.

"Medium" inherits the traditional for opera librettos stories with the participation of otherworldly forces: spirits, ghosts, the living dead, etc. The atmosphere of the opera is imbued with grotesque mystery and horror. The events take place in the living room of the medium 3/4 of Madame Flora, where parents come to hear the voices of their deceased children. A gloomy phantasmagoria, which is essentially a prank (Madame is skillfully assisted by her young assistants), ends with a bloody denouement.

"Telephone" and "Medium" are intended for staging on a chamber stage. This is evidenced by the reduced composition of the orchestra, and a small number of soloists. Therefore, their appearance on the Chamber Stage of the Bolshoi Theater in one evening, March 22, 2019, was quite natural. The production team – conductor Alexei Vereshchagin, director Alexander Molochnikov, set designers Sergey Choban and Agniya Sterligova – created a minimalist and modern performance, transferring events to our days and linking both operas with a common composition of performers.

The Medium by Menotti, The Telephone by Menotti, From (2021/2022), Directed by Alexander Molochnikov,, Conductor Alexey Vereshchagin, Boris Pokrovsky Chamber Stage of the Bolshoi Theater, Moscow, Russia

Performance credits (Cast & Crew )

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