The Consul

UCSC'S Music Department Opera Theatre presents Gian Carlo Menotti's Pulitzer Prize-winning opera "The Consul," May 29, 30, 31 and June 1, 2008. Performances will take place at the UCSC Music Center Recital Hall, which is transformed every year into a proscenium theater for the annual opera.

Over 100 students, faculty, and community members are involved in the production as musicians, singers, and production staff.

Synopsis

As the opera begins, we are transported to an unnamed 1940s postwar European country that has been torn by civil strife. The resistance fighter John Sorel, wounded by a gun shot, enters his home desperately searching for his wife, Magda. John explains to his wife that he must cross the frontier to safety since he his hunted by the secret police.

Not wanting to put his family into jeopardy with this very dangerous trip, they agree that Magda will go to the consulate of a neighboring country to ask for asylum. However, Magda is met at the consulate, by an oblivious secretary whose only job seems to be giving people the run-around. This tireless bureaucratic machine slowly brings Magda to a feeling of total discouragement and transforms her original attempts to obtain help into complete desperation.

The Cast ...

The passing of the Italian-born American composer and librettist, Gian Carlo Menotti this last February, brought great sadness to the world of music. Composer of the much-loved Amahl and the Night Visitors, Menotti wrote close to two dozen operas in a style that intended to please the popular taste. The Consul (1950), with which he won his first Pulitzer Prize is lesser-known than his Christmas opera Amahl, but its powerful contemporary theme certainly makes the opera timeless and of major importance in his output. One could certainly argue that it is his greatest work.

Born in 1911 in Cadegliano, Italy, Menotti was educated in the United States at institutions including Philadelphia's Curtis Institute. He is often revered as the father of American opera. Menotti is the founder of the Festival of Two Worlds in Spoleto, Italy, and its sister festival, Charleston, South Carolina's Spoleto USA. He earned a reputation as an arts ambassador between the two continents, and was awarded a Kennedy Center Honor for lifetime achievement in 1984.