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Curtis Institute of Music

Conductor

Michelle Rofrano

Stage director

Eve Summer

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Curtis Opera Theatre

Singer

Baritone

Nathan Schludecker

Theater director

Soprano

Juliette Tacchino

Thérèse

Tenor

Erik Tofte

Her husband

Morgan-Andrew King

Lacouf

Evan Gray

The Gendarme

Mezzo-soprano

Judy Zhuo

A newspaper vendor

Landry Allen

A reporter from Paris

Jackson Allen

The son

Bass

Yulin Yan

Un monsieur barbu

Juliet Rand

Une dame élégante

Shikta Mukherjee

Une grosse dame

Katie Trigg

1. Anna

Dancer

Maya Mor Mitrani

2. Anna

Mutter

Hongrui Ren

Vater

Bruder II

Bruder I

French

German

Transformations of Desire: A Captivating Opera Double Bill

Philadelphia

United States

Philadelphia Film Center

Transformations of Desire: A Captivating Opera Double Bill: Les mamelles de Tirésias Poulenc (+1 More)

Public

Private

Staged

Opera

The Breasts of Tiresias

The Seven Deadly Sins

Saurav Kumar

English

Approved

The Curtis Opera Theatre’s exciting season continues with a double bill featuring Francis Poulenc’s outrageously funny farce, Les Mamelles de Tirésias, alongside Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht’s darkly satirical “ballet chanté,” The Seven Deadly Sins, at the Philadelphia Film Center.  

Gender norms explode on the French Riviera in Les Mamelles de Tirésias (The Breasts of Tiresias), Poulenc’s surreal opéra bouffe. Thérèse, a bored housewife, grows weary of her daily routine and suddenly becomes the male General Tirésias when her breasts turn into balloons and float away. As they lead a new life fighting distant wars on foreign battlefields, their stay-at-home husband discovers a way to make babies on his own—but not just one: 40,049 of them. This clever comedy features a delightfully fizzy cocktail of opera, cabaret, and jazz, with a tale as consciously arty, feminist, and political as it is insightfully witty. 

Les Mamelles de Tirésias is sung in French with English supertitles.
Francis Poulenc, music and libretto  

A biting critique of industrial capitalism, Weill’s The Seven Deadly Sins follows the perils of a woman sent away by her exploitative family to earn enough money to buy a house on the Mississippi River. In this sung ballet of split personalities, a singer (Anna I) and a dancer (Anna II) face down the seven deadly sins, each testing her wavering moral compass at every turn. This sardonic tale of sacrifice draws on the classic pop song and dance numbers of the 1920s and ’30s, blended with that quintessential Weill sound and a timeless commentary on values, virtues, and the “almighty dollar.” 

The Seven Deadly Sins is sung in German with English supertitles.
Kurt Weill, music
Bertolt Brecht, libretto

Transformations of Desire: A Captivating Opera Double Bill by Poulenc, Weill, From (2024/2024), Directed by Eve Summer,, Conductor Michelle Rofrano, Philadelphia Film Center, Philadelphia, United States

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