A note from our Stage Director, Audrey Chait, about "Great American Opera: Menotti & Gershwin"

In the 1940s, the “radio play” was a leading popular entertainment, until television stole its thunder in the 1950s. The radio play, an art form in which a story is experienced through sound alone, is a perfect match for opera, a medium in which we already suspend our disbelief in many ways. 

We invite you into the imagined W-Opera Project Columbus (WOPC) station, in a slightly revisionist version of the 1940s. A group of singers gather to perform the new works of the time for the opera lovers of Columbus. We are so lucky to be joined by local radio legend Ron Bryant in the role of the announcer. Though The Old Maid and the Thief and Porgy and Bess seem of two different worlds, they premiered only four years apart in the 1930s. We chose to put them together because both pieces moved the landscape of classical music forward. 

Porgy and Bess premiered in 1935, not in an opera house, but on Broadway, with a cast of classically trained African-American singers. This landmark piece has evolved throughout the 20th century: it was made into a movie, toured to La Scala, and was embraced by American opera companies later in the 20th century. The leading roles have been portrayed by iconic African American singers, from Leontyne Price as Bess and Cab Calloway as Sportin’ Life in the 1950s, to Angel Blue and Eric Owens in the current Metropolitan Opera production. 

The young Italian-American composer Gian Carlo Menotti also had a gift for innovating the art form. He was approached by NBC to write an opera specifically for radio, a project that became The Old Maid and the Thief in 1939. Later, he would go on to also write the first opera commissioned for TV, Amahl and the Night Visitors. 

Today, these works are well known, and even canonical, but they were revolutionary in the early 20th century. I invite you to imagine yourselves back into the 1940s, hearing this music with fresh ears. I encourage you also to look forward - what new operas of today have that special magic that endures? I can think of no better gift to the art form than to seek out these works and help them succeed.