Tuesday, November 6, 2018

UAM announces two upcoming one-act operas

MONTICELLO, AR — Today the University of Arkansas at Monticello Music Theater Workshop announced it will present two one-act operas, The Old Maid and the Thief  by Gian-Carlo Menotti and A Little Nightmare Music by P. D. Q. Bach. The performance will begin at 7:30pm on Friday and Saturday, November 16th and 17th at the UAM Fine Arts Center Auditorium. Both one-act operas will be performed both nights. Admission is free for UAM students, faculty and staff as well as children under 12. Tickets for students 12 through high school cost $5; adults $10.

A Little Nightmare Music, fatefully edited by Professor Peter Schickele, is an opera in one irrevocable act concerning the mysteries surrounding the death of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. In P. D. Q.’s telling of the story, Mozart was indeed poisoned by his rival Antonio Salieri, but not for the reason everyone assumes. Perhaps the truth lies in P. D. Q.’s infamous weakness for wine.

In The Old Maid and the Thief, which Menotti dedicated to his own mother, Miss Todd lets her romantic imagination run wild when a handsome young stranger knocks on her kitchen door. Encouraged by her manipulative maid, Laetitia, who also has a romantic interest in the young stranger, Miss Todd attempts to prove she is daring and brave and would make him a wonderful wife by vowing, “I shall steal, I shall lie, I shall kill.” Sadly, this relationship can only end badly.

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