You think that you have relationship issues? Well, we’re going to be looking at some complicated connections on this week’s Sunday opera (2/24 3:00 p.m.), and then, we’ll have a bit of careless abandon! We’ll begin with Laurent Petitgirard’s operatic version of “Joseph Merrick the Elephant Man.” With a book based loosely on the play by Bernard Pomerance by Eric Nonn, the story centers on the life of an extremely deformed man who craves kind human interaction and to live like a “normal man.” The cast includes Nathalie Stutzmann, Nicolas Rivenq, Robert Breault, and Marie Devellereau with the French Opera Chorus and the Orchestre Philharmonique de Monte-Carlo with the composer conducting.
Our second challenging relationship comes from the 1938 ballet by Manuel de Falla entitled “El amor brujo” about an Andalusian Gypsy named Candela who must dance with the ghost of her dead husband who is obsessed with her. Finally, she tricks her husband’s lover, Lucia, to attend one of her dances, and at the last minute, Candela changes places with Lucia, and Lucia is “spirited” away leaving Candela to love the man whom she has really always loved. We’ll end on a happy note with the ballet arrangement of the music of Jacques Offenbach titled “Gaite Parisienne” which is all about flirtations and high spirits.
