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|Startsida | Singers | Creators | Synopsis | Operahouses | My operaworld | My blog - Operalogg | Searchbox |
Music and lyrics: Gian Carlo Menotti.
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First performance: Philadelphia, Schubert Theatre 1 mars 1950.
| Role | Voicetype |
|---|---|
| Anna Gomez | soprano |
| Assan | baryton |
| Foreign Woman | baritone |
| John Sorel | baritone |
| John´s Mother | alto |
| Magda Sorel | soprano |
| Magician | tenor |
| Nika Magadoff | tenor |
| Secret Agent | bass |
| Secretary | mezzosoprano |
| Vera Boronel | alto |
In a nameless police state, John Sorel is followed home by the police after attending a secret meeting. He greets his wife Magda, her mother and their sickly baby son before hiding on the roof. A secret policeman arrives and questions Magda, who refuses to co-operate. As he leaves, John emerges and reassures Magda that they will escape, although she will need a visa. Before leavin, he tells her the signal to join him - breaking of one of their windows. At the Consulate, a secretary sits at her desk, in front of the consul´s office. Various desperate people have their appeals for help rejected by the secretary; more arrive, sit and wait while the secretary gleefully throws ever more lunatic obstacles in their paths.
Magda suffers a terrible nightmare in which John introduces the Consulate secretary as his sister, followed by the death of their baby. She wakes with a scream, just as a window shatters into the room. The glasscutter, Assan, arrives soon after and passes a message from John, who is hiding in the hills, that she is to join him as soon as she has her papers. Meanwhile, the mother nurses the baby as it finally dies. Back at the Consulate, the same people are waiting for help. Magda arrives and asks for her visa. A magician is complaining that he has been to the Consulate seven times, with none of his questions answered. Furious, he puts the waiting crowd to sleep, which panics the secretary, who cannot cope with having her routine disturbed. When everyone wakes, Magda denounces the system. The secretary informs Magda that the consul will see her when his current visitor has left. When the door opens, the visitor turns out to be the secret policeman: Magda faints.
Magda is still waiting to see the consul. Eventually, the secretary brings news that her papers are ready. News arrives that John has heard of the death of his child and is on his way back to fetch his wife. Magda sends a note warning him not to return. Too late: he bursts into the Consulate, only to be told by the secretary that Magda has left, and as he tries to flee the police rush in and arrest him. The secretary promises to ring Magda. Back at their apartment, the phone is ringing but Magda has decided to kill herself. The gas oven is on, and she is covering her head with a shawl. She lies down in the kitchen, with her head in the oven as the teephone continues to ring.
Adress:http://www.mogensoperasidor.se/consulenglish.htm