The Medium

Oper Frankfurt, Opera House, Frankfurt am Main, Germany

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5 PM

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Important Info

Type: Opera

City: Frankfurt am Main, Germany

Starts at: 17:00

Acts: 2

Duration:

Sung in: English

Titles in: English,German

Ticket delivery: E-Tickets

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Overview

Madame Flora, helped by her daydreaming daughter Monica and a mute orphan boy Toby, who harbours loving feelings for Monica, stages sceances, which earn her good money. Her clients are convinced that they are making contact with dead relatives through Flora. She doesn't believe in the supernatural – until one day when, out of nowhere, a cold hand clasps her neck...

Gian Carlo Menotti's meeting with an English baroness, who regularly made „contact with her dead daughter“ shook the composer so deeply that he turned it into an opera, which was to bring about his international breakthrough – after Arturo Toscanini, whom Menotti invited to one of the first performances, became a great fan of the work. The Medium was performed about 200 times in 1947, in New York alone. Soon afterwards a commission came from Rome to make a film, which theatre enthusiast Menotti took in hand and which was very successful at the 1952 Cannes Festival. Critics often describe Menotti's musical language as “banal“ or „superficial“. The enormous popularity of the composer, and his being rooted in tradition, played into his hands. He objected to this calmly: „Tonality may not perhaps be necessary, but its dramatic function has still not been replaced by another medium. Like other writers and lyricists today, I prefer to use a "spoken language".

History

Premiere of this production: 08 May 1946, Columbia University, New York

The Medium is a short (one-hour-long) two-act dramatic opera with words and music by Gian Carlo Menotti. Commissioned by Columbia University, its first performance was there on 8 May 1946. The opera's first professional production was presented on a double bill with Menotti's The Telephone at the Heckscher Theater, New York City, February 18–20, 1947 by the Ballet Society. The Broadway production took place on May 1, 1947, at the Ethel Barrymore Theater with the same cast.

Synopsis

Act 1

The medium's parlor

Monica, Madame Flora's daughter, and Toby, a mute servant boy rescued from "the streets of Budapest" play dress-up. When Madame Flora, or "Baba" as they call her, arrives home drunk, she violently chastises them for not preparing for that night's seance. Soon the guests arrive, Mr. and Mrs. Gobineau, regulars, and the widow Mrs. Nolan who is attending for the first time. With Madame Flora in a trance in her chair, a fake seance is held where Mrs. Nolan speaks with what she thinks is her deceased sixteen-year-old daughter but is really Monica behind a screen. As Monica disappears, Mrs. Nolan rushes toward the figure and is restrained by the Gobineaus. When order is restored, Mr. and Mrs. Gobineau "communicate" with their deceased two-year-old son Mickey, who, having never learned to speak, only laughs. After they say goodbye to him, Madame Flora "suddenly, with a loud gasp... clutches at her throat with both hands." She feels a phantom hand clutching her throat and is "terror-stricken." After demanding that the guests leave, she calls for Monica and tells her what she felt, eventually blaming Toby who was in the other room the whole time. In an effort to calm Baba's drunken rage toward Toby, Monica sings her the dark lullaby "The Black Swan" which is interrupted by a voice that Baba hears causing her to fly into a terrified rage at Toby for not telling her where the voice is coming from. The act ends with Monica again singing the lullaby while Baba recites her Hail Marys.

Act 2

A few days later

Toby is giving a puppet show for Monica. Their mutual love becomes more obvious. When Baba comes home, she resumes her accusations on Toby, sure that he knows what went on that night. The guests again arrive, expecting another seance but are driven away by Madame Flora who tries to convince them that the whole thing was a sham by revealing all the tricks that she and Monica used. But the guests are not convinced and leave claiming that while she might have thought she was cheating them, she in fact was not. Once the guests are gone, she drives Toby out despite Monica's pleas on his behalf. With everyone gone, and Monica in her room, Baba pours herself another drink and questions her own sanity, becoming wild with drink and eventually passing out. Once she has fallen asleep, Toby sneaks back in and tries to get into Monica's room, but finds it locked and eventually goes to the trunk to find his tambourine. While searching, he knocks the lid of the trunk down waking Baba. Toby quickly hides in the puppet theater. As Baba tries to see where the noise came from and fetches a revolver from a drawer in the table. "Hysterically" she shouts out "Who is it? Speak or I'll Shoot!" and the puppet theater curtain moves. " Baba screams and fires at it several times." As Toby's bloody body collapses grasping the curtain, Baba says "I've killed the ghost! I've killed the ghost!" Monica, hearing the gunshots, enters, sees Toby's lifeless body and runs for help. As the final curtain falls very slowly Baba asks, in a hoarse whisper, "Was it you?"

Venue Info

Oper Frankfurt - Frankfurt am Main
Untermainanlage 11

The Oper Frankfurt (Frankfurt Opera) is one of the leading opera companies in Europe, and voted best "Opera house of the year" several times since 1996.

Opera in Frankfurt am Main has a long tradition, with many world premieres such as Franz Schreker's Der ferne Klang in 1912, Fennimore und Gerda by Frederick Delius in 1919, and Carl Orff's Carmina Burana in 1937. Frankfurt's international recognition began in the Gielen Era, 1977 to 1987, when Michael Gielen and stage directors such as Ruth Berghaus collaborated.

A historic opera house from 1880 was destroyed in World War II, and reconstructed as a concert hall, Alte Oper. The present opera house, built in 1963, is under one roof with the stage for drama. The opera orchestra is called Frankfurter Opern- und Museumsorchester. Today's venue for Baroque and contemporary opera is the Bockenheimer Depot, a former tram depot.

Oper Frankfurt is part of the Städtische Bühnen Frankfurt.

Frankfurt's first opera was Johann Theile's Adam und Eva, performed in 1698 by Johann Velten's touring company. The young Goethe's first operas in his home town of Frankfurt were productions by Theobald Marchand's company.

1782 – 1880
Opened in 1782, the Comoedienhaus was the first permanent venue of the Frankfurt Theater (drama and opera). In 1878 German violinist Willy Hess took up the leadership of the Oper Frankfurt. He resigned from that post in 1886 to take up a professorship in the Rotterdam Conservatorium voor Muziek.

1880 – 1944
The first representative opera house of the city was inaugurated in Frankfurt in 1880 at Opernplatz. Under the direction of the first Intendant Emil Claar and the first Kapellmeister Felix Otto Dessoff, the house was opened with Mozart's opera Don Giovanni.

During the 1920s, the opera in Frankfurt had more prominent Jewish singers than any other company in Germany, including the tenor Hermann Schramm, bass Hans Erl (the first King in Schreker's Der Schatzgräber), baritone Richard Breitenfeld and contralto Magda Spiegel, who also toured with Frankfurt Opera performing Wagner in the Netherlands. These singers were forced to leave the opera in June 1933. Orff's Carmina Burana was premiered at Oper Frankfurt in 1937. Jewish members of the opera company among those rounded up at 9 November 1938 at the Festhalle Frankfurt, where Erl sang In diesen Heilgen Hallen, from the Magic Flute for the deportees. Members of Frankfurt Opera were sent to Auschwitz and other camps where they perished.

1945 – 1970s
The opera house was damaged in an air raid in January 1944, and then almost completely destroyed in March. A new house for opera and play was built, completed in 1963 at the Theaterplatz (now Willy-Brandt-Platz). In 1952, Georg Solti became Generalmusikdirektor (GMD) and Intendant of the Oper Frankfurt, where he remained in charge for nine years.

The Gielen Era
From 1977 to 1987, Frankfurt Opera was led by Michael Gielen. This decade became known as the "Gielen Era", notable for the music of a conductor who was also a composer, and directors including Ruth Berghaus and Hans Neuenfels, whose productions of standard works such as Verdi's Aida and Wagner's Ring Cycle were thought-provoking. Operas which received their world premieres at the house were also performed again, including Franz Schreker's Die Gezeichneten.

1987 – present
The stage of the opera house was destroyed by a fire in November 1987. The opera house was rebuilt and opened in April 1991. Many famous singers started their career with the company, including Franz Völker, Edda Moser, Cheryl Studer and Diana Damrau, and many established artists have been engaged there in recent seasons including Christian Gerhaher, whose roles here have included Monteverdi's L'Orfeo and his first Wolfram in Wagner's Tannhäuser, Piotr Beczała in Massenet's Werther and Jan-Hendrik Rootering in Wagner's Parsifal.

Since 2002, Bernd Loebe has served as Intendant of the company. The company's current GMD is Sebastian Weigle, since 2008. Weigle has made commercial recordings of opera with the company for the OEHMS Classics label. He is scheduled to stand down as GMD of Oper Frankfurt at the close of the 2022–2023 season. In October 2021, the company announced the appointment of Thomas Guggeis as the next GMD of the company, effective with the 2023–2024 season, with an initial contract of 5 years.

Oper Frankfurt was voted 1996, 2003, 2015, 2018 and 2020 "Opera House of the Year" by the magazine Opernwelt.