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The Medium
The late Gian Carlo Menotti’s The Medium is paired in a double bill with Ruggiero Leoncavallo’s Pagliacci. Not your typical pairing, but the two share a similar atmosphere. In The Medium, we have the play acting of a séance, in Pagliacci the play acting of a commedia dell’arte troupe. The common link between the two operas is a protagonist who goes over the edge of sanity and commits murder.
The Medium was written in 1946 and ran for 211 performances on Broadway in 1947. It was paired with Menotti’s The Telephone. As Bernard Holland of The New York Times wrote in Mr. Menotti’s obituary on February 1, 2007, “‘The Medium’ was a compendium of the Menotti style — delicate orchestration, lyric writing and often a melodramatic theatricality.” At the time of its premiere, New York Times music critic Olin Downes wrote, "we have here the quality of opera. It is dramatic music, emphatic in action as well as feeling, and in essence song, which is what opera must be. No other American composer has shown the inborn talent that Mr. Menotti, an Italian by descent, unquestionably possesses for the lyric theater."
The Medium introduces Metropolitan Opera mezzo-soprano Sondra
Kelly (Deutsche Oper Berlin/Connecticut Opera/Sarasota Opera/Utah Opera) in her Syracuse Opera debut as Madame Flora, also known as Baba, in what is sure to be a tour-de-force performance. Debut artist Jason
Detwiler (Sacramento Opera/Opera Idaho/ Opera San Jose) appears in both operas, first as Mr. Gobineau in The Medium and Syracuse soprano Julia
Ebner (Tri-Cities Opera) makes her mainstage debut as Monica. Ron
Luchsinger will stage direct and Steven Crawford (Metropolitan Opera/Opera Company of North Carolina/Cincinatti Opera) will conduct.
Synopsis The Medium
Madame Flora, also called “Baba”, holds fake séances with the aid of her daughter, Monica, and the mute gypsy boy, Toby. Mr. and Mrs. Gobineau and Mrs. Nolan want to communicate with their dead children. Flora terminates the séance when she feels a hand around her throat. She is terrified, and is convinced it was Toby. The parents return, but she chases them away saying she is a fraud. She chases Toby out of the house and locks Monica up in her room. Toby sneaks back in and hides behind a curtain. Flora senses something amiss and shoots in the direction where Toby is hiding. Toby falls to the floor, dying, as Flora asks, “Was it you? Was it you?”
Pagliacci
Pagliacci premiered 55 years before The Medium and is considered a prime example of “verismo” opera, which offered real people in real situations, as opposed to stories about kings and queens or gods. Like Menotti, Leoncavallo wrote his own libretto, which was based on a true story he learned from his father, a judge, who presided over a case of an actor who murdered his wife in a jealous rage. The opera was an instant hit.
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