Pearls of Music Theater
The program broadcasts the best performances of famous operas, ballets, musicals, and operettas, presenting their plots and the history of their creation. Before each act, the corresponding part of libretto is read, which makes the listening experience more vivid and comprehensible.
- Author of the program: Inessa Khachatryan
Giacomo Puccini, Madama Butterfly
According to the author of this opera, it is a "Japanese tragedy."
From the end of the 19th century to the beginning of the 20th, Europeans sought after exoticism, and the workers of art tried to enrich their works with Asian flavor. By choosing a Japanese theme, Puccini showed the importance of the drama of an individual.
The opera is based on American writer John Long's novel. David Belasco made a drama of it, and its staging so impressed Puccini that he asked Luigi Illica and Giuseppe Giacosa to transform the play into an opera libretto.
The actions of the opera take place in Nagasaki in 1900.
Adolphе Adam, Giselle, or the Wilis
The libretto of Adolphе Adam's fantastic ballet Giselle was written by Jules-Henri Vernoy de Saint-Georges and Théophile Gautier on the basis of Heinrich Heine's adaptation of a Slavic legend. The legend is about a group of female night dancers who are called Wilis. These unhappy young beings are brides that had died before entering the nuptial bed. At midnight, they come out of their graves, trying to re-experience their happy days. But death will happen to the passerby who will be so unfortunate to encounter them. They will take him in a round dance and force to dance with them until he falls down breathless. Giselle, a woman who had become disappointed in love and been deceived, dies and turns into a night dancer, a Wilis.
Ruggero Leoncavallo, Pagliacci
Leoncavallo's opera Pagliacci was premiered in 1892. The events of the plot happen in Italy's south, in the small village of Montalto, Calabria. "Pagliacci" means "clowns." This story is not a product of fantasy only; the author tried to reflect the real life, being inspired by that same reality.
Leonard Bernstein, West Side Story
This musical is about two rival gangs, the Jets (White) and the Sharks (Puerto Rican), who struggle for control of the neighborhood somewhere in the Upper West Side of New York City. Though the conflicts found in Shakespear's Romeo and Juliette also recur here, but this story is even more touching and emotional. Until the very last moment, the audience expects to witness a happy end, but the real life is sometimes more cruel...
