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Media contact: Talia Fisher, [email protected]
Philadelphia, PA –The Philadelphia Singers, under the musical direction of David Hayes, will present the East Coast premiere of its joint commission of Jake Heggie’s The Radio Hour, set to a libretto by his frequent collaborator, Gene Scheer. The piece will be stage-directed and choreographed by Seán Curran, artistic director of the Seán Curran Company of New York. The Radio Hour will be combined with Gian Carlo Menotti’s The Unicorn, the Gorgon, and the Manticore in a program titled “Myths and Magic: Voice of Storytelling” on March 27 and 28, 2015 at the Temple Performing Arts Center.
The RadioHour is an innovative hybrid between choral and operatic mediums, while also integrating instrumentalists and a silent actor/dancer to form a “choral opera.” In The Radio Hour, the chorus is not just static and symbolic, but rather, is directly engaged in the story and provides action and motivation. In fact, the chorus serves as the voice of the main character. Heggie and Scheer, already recognized for their operatic innovations, have bridged new ground with Curran in this one act, 35-minute work by adding in staging, choreography, and instruments, and by using the chorus to represent the innermost thoughts – both good and bad – of the lead character.
“There is an intriguing connection and melodic kinship between The Radio Hour and Menotti’s work,” said David Hayes, The Singers’ music director. “Both works are about greater concepts via quasi-fairy tales. Menotti’s work is an allegory about how creative artists are perceived in the community and sometimes misunderstood, while The Radio Hour makes a nod to Alice in Wonderland to convey the power of connecting to the world of art and imagination.” Menotti, educated at Philadelphia’s Curtis Institute of Music, wrote The Unicorn, the Gordon, and the Manticore in 1956.
The soundtrack to our lives(The Radio Hour synopsis)
A forlorn young woman, Nora, prepares to go to sleep. She turns on a large radio and lights come up on a distant radio studio where the choir sings. Nora changes stations as she tries to find something fun, funny, comforting or meaningful to her. As she turns the knob, the choir shifts from swing numbers to advertisements, to religious music, news, a variety show, then pop and classical themed programs. Back and forth she goes until finally she lands on a station that, though mostly static, seems magically to be calling her name. As she fine-tunes the radio, every channel seems to be broadcasting private information about her life. Suddenly, the front of the radio opens up like a door. Like Alice crawling through the looking glass, Nora crawls through the radio and lands in a radio studio where the choir welcomes her. Here in this other worldly, magical place, Nora has a transformative experience through the power of music.
Following the crowd (The Unicorn,The Gorgon, and the Manticore synopsis)
This piece is a madrigal fable about a poet who, for three successive Sundays, takes a different pet for a walk around town: a unicorn, a gorgon, and a manticore. The pets symbolize the poet’s life: his youth, middle, and old age. On the first Sunday, the town’s Countess decides she must have her own unicorn and procures her own, with the townspeople soon following suit. The next Sunday they see the strange man with a gorgon, and assume that he has killed the unicorn. So the Countess and townspeople kill their unicorns as well and acquire gorgons. The same happens the following week when they see the man with a manticore. On the fourth Sunday, the poet fails to appear with a new pet and so they assume that he has killed the manticore too. Outraged, they rush to his castle to attack him and pass judgment, only to find him near death, surrounded by his three pets – all alive. The poet scolds the townspeople for blindly following social conventions and implies that only in the artist will society find redemption.
The Philadelphia Singers will perform the concert on Friday, March 27 and Saturday, March 28, 2015, 7:30pm at the Temple Performing Arts Center located at 1837 N. Broad Street, Philadelphia, PA, 19121. Tickets are available online at www.philadelphiasingers.org with discounts for group sales and students.
The Radio Hour was co-commissioned by The Philadelphia Singers, The Pacific Chorale of Southern California, Vocal Essence of Minneapolis, and Conspirare of Austin, Texas.
The Philadelphia production of The Radio Hour is made possible by grants from the William Penn Foundation and The Ethel Sergeant Clark Smith Memorial Fund and by generous gifts from Robert E. Mortensen and Jay and Teri Gemberling-Johnson.