Received in the mail this morning : program books from Mannheim and Cincinnati

This Thursday morning, I have received two program books for contemporary operas :

- Ricky Ian Gordon : Morning Star, Cincinnati, June 30 ;
- Lucia Ronchetti : Esame di mezzanotte, Mannheim, May 29.

The first one is a 96 pages book. It contains the complete program for the 2015 season at the Cincinnati Opera. 5 pages are dedicated to Gordon's opera. It is entirely in English. It contains :

- complete cast and crew ;
- synopsis, written by stage director Ron Daniels ;
- Ricky Ian Gordon : The Birth of 'Morning Star' ;
- biographies of all season artists, with black and white headshot.

The second is a 104 pages book. It is entirely in German. It contains :

- complete cast and crew ;
- color photos of the piano dress rehearsal (May 19) ;
- an article by composer Lucia Ronchetti on libretto source and librettist Ermanno Cavazzoni ;
- Le tentazioni di Girolamo, by librettist Ermanno Cavazzoni ;
- detailed synopsis ;
- Helga de la Motte-Haber : Nachtmahre ;
- director Achim Freyer : Gedanken zur Uraufführung ;
- Bibliotheksmusik, a dialogue with composer Lucia Ronchetti and dramaturge Elena Garcia Fernandez ;
- Stefano Nardelli : Lucia Ronchetti : zeitgenössisches Empfinden mit barocken Wurzeln ;
- complete bilingual (Italian and German) libretto.

There are no biographies.
The covers of all the program book for contemporary operas I have can be seen in this flickr folder.

May 29th, 2015 : world première of Lucia Ronchetti's 'Esame di mezzanotte' in Mannheim

Today, Lucia Ronchetti's new opera, Esame di mezzanotte, with a libretto by Ermanno Cavazzoni, will be performed in Mannheim, at the National Theater.

The libretto in Italian by the author Ermanno Cavazzoni, who previously wrote the original idea for Federico Fellini’s film Die Stimme des Mondes (The Voice of the Moon) was created on the basis of his novel Mitternachtsabitur (Final Exam at Midnight).

A young man driven by anxiety to insomnia is suffering from a typical case of extreme fear: his final exams will take place tomorrow and he has forgotten everything ... At night, Girolamenti wanders around a library, but the library has lost its actual purpose. It is now like the underground of a city, a collecting tank for non-conformists. Girolamenti meets bizarre creatures and demons that crawl out of the books and lurk under the benches. Fantasies become realities, real fears and surreal occurrences are mixed together until they are unrecognizable. A comic and fantastic opera about the coming end of the world of books, about examinations and lack of concentration, about disturbances and being disturbed, comic nightmares and fears, and not least of all about people who live on the edge of society. (reproduced from the opera house website)

The opera should last about 2 hours, including a 20 minutes intermission. It is a least Ronchetti's third opera, after Neumond (Mannheim, 2011) and Mise en abyme (Dresden, 2015).

The cast includes countertenor Matthew Shaw (Giro Lamenti), bass Magnus Piontek (Fischietti), tenor Ziad Nehme (Natale), soprano Vera-Lotte Böcker (Iris) and actor Reuben Willcox (Santoro). Johannes Kalitzke conducts the Orchestra, Choir and Children's Choir of the Theater Mannheim. Achim Freyer directs.