New York (Top40 Charts/ Albany Records)- Last week Albany Records released highlights from American contemporary opera and music-theater composer Michael Dellaira's Che'ri, a musical drama based on the 1921 Colette novel with a libretto by Susan Yankowitz. Written in a vernacular harmonic language, this new recording consists of selections from New York's Actors Studio Workshop production in 2005, directed by The Actors Studio co-Artistic
Director and Tony-Award winner Carlin Glynn.
Che'ri is now available at Albany Records, Amazon (or your favorite CD vendor).
About Che'ri
A work for the crossover territory of music-theatre and opera, Che'ri is a musical love story in two acts. The story takes place in the Parisian demi-monde just before the first World War and dramatizes the doomed love affair between Le'a de Lonval, a 49 year old ex-courtesan, and her lover of seven years, the 23 year old Che'ri.
After early support from the Composers Chamber Theater, American Opera Projects, the Center for Contemporary Opera and Lincoln Center's Clark Studio Theater, Estelle Parsons, then Artistic Director at The Actors Studio, invited Dellaira and Yankowitz to develop Che'ri at the Studio under the direction of Tony-award winning actress and director Carlin Glynn. This led to the full workshop production at the Studio in May, 2005. The following year, Che'ri was a finalist for the Richard Rodgers Award in Musical Theater. That same year excerpts from the piece were selected for performance by artists from Portland Opera and Tacoma Opera as part of OPERA America's New Works Sampler.
Composer Michael Dellaira
Michael Dellaira's "haunting harmonies" (NewMusicBox.org), his "eloquence and sensitivity" (New York Times) and his "flair for vocal writing" (ClassicsToday.com) are nowhere more evident than in this recording of Che'ri. Not surprisingly, his choral works are widely performed in the U.S. and Europe, most recently at the Eighth World Symposium on Choral Music in Copenhagen, and his first work for theater, the monodrama Maud (written for mezzo-soprano and computer-generated sounds) was awarded an ASCAP Morton Gould Award as well as First Prize by the American Society of University Composers. Dellaira has also been awarded two residencies at The Composers Conference, a Fulbright Fellowship to Rome, grants from the American Music Center, Cary Trust, Ford Foundation, Mellon Foundation, New Jersey Arts Council and most recently, a Jerome Foundation commission from the American Composers Forum. A graduate of Georgetown University and the Academy of Santa Cecilia, he earned his Ph.D. in music composition from Princeton University. His principal teachers were Robert Parris, Milton Babbitt and Goffredo Petrassi. Currently Dellaira is Composer-in-Residence at the The Center for Contemporary Opera in New York, and his forthcoming opera, based on Joseph Conrad's novel The Secret Agent, with a libretto by J.D. McClatchy, is a joint commission from the Center for Contemporary Opera, Long Leaf Opera and San Antonio Opera.
SELECTIONS FROM CHE'RI Albany Records-2009 www.albanyrecords.com
MUSIC BY MICHAEL DELLAIRA | LIBRETTO BY SUSAN YANKOWITZ
The Actors Studio Workshop Production, Carlin Glynn, Director | Mark Shapiro, Conductor
Katrin Stamatis, violin | Emily Schaefer, cello | Christopher Miele, clarinet, bass clarinet & saxophone
Erik Lautier: Che'ri
Maggi-Meg Reed: Le'a
Elena Shaddow: Edme'e
Marni Nixon: Charlotte
Lorinda Lisitza: Marie-Laure
Peter Clark: Patron
Charlotte Cohn: Chanteuse
CHE'RI - THE STORY
Two courtesans now comfortably retired (Marie-Laure and Charlotte) have arranged the marriage of their children. Young and pretty, Edme'e (Marie-Laure's daughter) will wed Charlotte's son, the arrogant and vain Fred, also known as Che'ri. Marie-Laure and Charlotte of course are aware that for the past six years Che'ri has been involved in a sexual relationship with their good friend, Le'a, now 49 years old but at one time the most desirable of all the women of the Parisian demi-monde. Though such relationships between older women and younger men are common, and encouraged in this world, no one expects the pair to fall in love. Now that Che'ri is about to be married, Le'a realizes that age is her enemy; much older than he, she will lose her allure-and, she fears, lose him-so she decides she must give him up.
Adapted from Colette's 1921 novel, Susan Yankowitz's libretto is comic and sad, poignant and ribald, serious and light-hearted, for where such barriers as class, race, or politics divide the lovers in works like La Traviata, West Side Story, South Pacific, Romeo and Juliet, or Tosca, Che'ri is a bittersweet meditation on that moment when all persons 'of a certain age' realize they have crossed the invisible meridian that separates their youth from what is left of their lives.
