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The Old Majestic
an opera by UTD music faculty
members
Robert Xavier Rodriguez (composer) and Mary Medrick
(librettist)
The Old Majestic will receive
its premiere production this spring at the University
of Texas at Austin Performing Arts Center's McCullough
Theatre on April 23, 25, 30, and May 2, 2004.
Musical direction will be by David Neely, with stage
direction by Robert DeSimone. For ticket information,
call 512.471.1444 or see http://www.utpac.org/2003ticketbooth.php.
Concert scenes from The Old Majestic were featured
last May on the New York City Opera's VOX2003 Showcase
of American Operas, conducted by NYCO Music Director,
George Manahan. The Old Majestic (1988), commissioned
by The San Antonio Festival, is a backstage comedy-romance
set in 1930 and inspired by the historic Majestic Theater
in San Antonio, Texas. When the story begins, the stock
market has recently crashed, and The Majestic, like
other Vaudeville theaters, is beginning to show more
and more movies. It is clear that Vaudeville performers
will soon be replaced by films. Faced with the approaching
end of their professional world, the opera’s eight
fictional Vaudeville characters cope in a variety of
ways, both comic and serious. The musical score is stylistically
a fusion of opera and musical theater, with rich operatic
ensembles in a Broadway-inspired style. The libretto,
based on an original story, includes bits of actual
Vaudeville routines, along with authentic sayings and
reminiscences of celebrated Vaudeville performers, particularly
the colorful Eddie Cantor.
Critical acclaim for the opera has included, "..a
romp, full of fun, wit, charm, drama, good music ...The
banter, corny vaudeville jokes, the characters are all
absolutely wonderful ...The action is non-stop... the
laughs real and regular. The breadth of the music is
almost unbelievable, from a love duet to lively ragtime,
a tango and a grand finale, placing it all, in Rodríguez’s
words “somewhere between Broadway and opera.”...a
splendid, delightful work ...with its wit, charm and
genius. We have not heard or seen the last of this cleverly
brilliant opera... whose message and music are wonderfully
universal." David Anthony Richelieu, San Antonio
Express-News.
The music of Robert
Xavier Rodríguez has been described
as “Romantically dramatic,” (Washington
Post), “richly lyrical” (Musical
America) and “glowing with a physical animation
and delicate balance of moods that combine seductively
with his all-encompassing sense of humor” (Los
Angeles Times). His other full-length stage works
include The Last Night of Don Juan, based on
the Rostand play, and Frida, based on the life
of Mexican painter, Frida Kahlo, which the New York
Times named "The best Opera/Musical Theater
of 1991." Rodríguez’ music has been
performed by conductors such as Sir Neville Marriner,
Antal Dorati, Eduardo Mata, Andrew Litton, James DePriest,
Sir Raymond Leppard, Keith Lockhart and Leonard Slatkin.
His work has received over 2000 professional orchestral
and operatic performances in recent seasons by such
organizations as the Vienna Schauspielhaus, Theater
Nordhausen, Theater Recklinghausen, National Opera of
Mexico, BAM Next Wave Festival, Boston Repertory Theater,
American Music Theater Festival (now Prince Theater),
Dallas Opera, Houston Grand Opera, Michigan Opera Theatre,
Orlando Opera, New York City Opera, Aspen Music Festival,
Tanglewood Music Festival, Israel Philharmonic Orchestra,
Mexico City Philharmonic, the Baltimore, Dallas, Houston,
San Antonio, Knoxville, Indianapolis, St. Louis, Pittsburgh,
Milwaukee, Boston and Chicago Symphonies, the Los Angeles
Philharmonic, Louisville Orchestra, National Symphony,
Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra and Cleveland Orchestra.
Rodriguez' chamber works have been performed on the
Juilliard Focus Series, in London, Paris, Dijon, Monte
Carlo, The Hague, Copenhagen, Stockholm, Berlin, Edinburgh
and other musical centers. His music is recorded on
CRI (Grammy nomination), Albany and other labels and
is published exclusively by G. Schirmer. Rodríguez
has served as Composer-in-Residence with the Los Angeles
Chamber Orchestra, the San Antonio Symphony and the
Dallas Symphony. He is currently Professor and Conductor
of the Musica Nova ensemble at The University of Texas
at Dallas.
Versatility characterizes the career
of Mary Medrick:
librettist, composer, arranger, conductor, pianist,
accordionist, arts administrator and teacher. The
Old Majestic is Medrick's second collaboration
as a librettist with composer Robert Xavier Rodriguez.
Their one-act children's opera, Monkey See, Monkey
Do, commissioned by the Dallas Opera, was reported
by Opera News to be the fourth most often-performed
20th-century opera in the United States. Medrick's works
as a composer include vocal jazz arrangements plus original
scores for three full-length stage works: Frankenstein,
the Musical; Lord Byron and, in the current
season, High Popalorum, commissioned by the
Union Parish Arts Council in Louisiana. Medrick has
conducted productions of shows such as Forbidden
Broadway, Passion, Kurt Weill: A Musical Odyssey, Man
of La Mancha, Cabaret and Twelfth Night
for theaters such as Plano Repertory Theater, Addison
Centre Theater and the Dallas Theater Center. As a pianist,
Medrick has performed with the Charleston (S.C.) Symphony,
the Richardson (Texas) Symphony, the Dallas-Ft. Worth
Ballet and the Dallas Summer Musicals ( Fosse, Jekyll
and Hyde) and has toured 17 countries, including
the premiere tour of Porgy and Bess in Israel. As an
accordionist, she has appeared with the Dallas Opera,
the San Antonio Symphony, the Bowdoin Festival, the
Cervantino Festival (Guanajuato and Mexico City), the
Sammons Jazz Series, the Dallas Museum of Art's Jazz
Under the Stars Series, Musica Nova and
Voices of Change (CRI recording). As an arts administrator,
Medrick has served as Project Director for Meet the
Composer /Texas and as Executive Director of the Texas
Composers Forum. She is currently on the faculty of
the University of Texas at Dallas.
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