Brooklyn College Conservatory of Music Stages World Premier of Bruno Rigacci opera Ecuba

Maestro Bruno Rigacci at the start of his career, around the time he composed his award-winning one-act opera Ecuba.

April 25, 2002    In 1950, the twenty-eight-year-old composer Bruno Rigacci was awarded the first prize at the Teatro dell'Opera in Rome, for his one-act opera Ecuba. et in 1184 B.C. at the end of the Trojan War, follows the story of King Priam's widowed wife, Hecuba, and her two daughters, Cassandra the Prophetess and the maiden Polyxena, the youngest member of the Trojan royalty.

   As the city of Troy burns in the background, the conquering armies of Agamemnon and Menalaeus want Hecuba to hand over Cassandra to be Agamemnon's captive. Cassandra, who was given the gift of prophesy by the god Apollo, but not the gift of persuasion, is considered to be half-mad. Polyxena had earlier fallen in love with the Greek warrior Achilles, who was killed during an earlier battle after being struck by a Trojan arrow on the back of his ankle. While Achilles may be dead, his ghost has requested Polyxena be sacrificed at his tomb, and in exchange, Achilles will provide a calm sea for the Greek ships to return home. While Cassandra makes wild protests, and foretells terrible fates for Agamemnon and the Greeks, Polyxena accepts her fate bravely, and is slaughtered by Neoptolemus, the ruthless son of Achilles, who had earlier murdered Polyxena's father, King Priam.

Bruno Rigacci's award winning opera, with its large cast and complicated staging received a concert premier in Rome on March 31, 1951, but was never staged, making the Brooklyn College performance Ecuba's world premier. Rigacci, now 81 years old and living in Florence, is best-known as a conductor, and has led concerts and operas with dozens of orchestras in Europe and the United States, including Maggio Musicale Fiorentino, Opera di Roma; La Finice in Venice, Teatro alla Scala in Milan, the New York City Opera and the Philadelphia Orchestra. "I've known Bruno for many years," says Richard Barrett, director of the Brooklyn College Conservatory Orchestra. "A few years ago, when I was in Italy, he gave me a CD which he made himself from a recording of the 1951 performance, and I fell in love with it. Never had I heard such passionate, wonderful music!"

Famed mezzo-soprano Mignon Dunn, an adjunct associate professor of voice in the Conservatory, is directing the performance. "The lead in the opera, the character of Ecuba, is a mezzo-soprano, and I'm really sorry I never got the chance to do it," says Dunn, who rose to prominence during the 50s and 60s in hundreds of roles at the Metropolitan Opera and internationally. "I've known Bruno for 20 years, he's a very funny and charming man," Dunn adds. "And he's always been telling me that I should sing it."

"I consider this opera a sort of prequel to the Richard Strauss opera Elektra, which I've directed all over the country," says Dunn. "It's got many of the same characters, and the music is terrific, too. It's a lot like Puccini, and there are several great roles for mezzo-sopranos and light-sopranos. The story is about the drama of mothers losing their children, while big generals go around giving speeches, so I'm going to make the staging as classical as I can. There are stories like this one happening right now, all over the world. People are always going through this very same tragedy, as wars take children away from their parents."
Ecuba will debut Whitman Hall at Brooklyn College at 2 p.m., Saturday, May 4, and will be repeated on Sunday, May 5 at the same time. Maestro Rigacci is expected to be in the audience for the Saturday performance. Because the opera is just over an hour in length, another one-act-opera, Gianni Schicchi (1918) by Giacomo Puccinni will follow after a short intermission. As if to balance the unrelenting tragedy of the preceding performance, this comic opera deals with the greedy Donati family. Upset that their recently-dead patriarch left his entire fortune to a local monastery, the family enlists the unscrupulous Gianni Schicchi impersonate the dead man on his death bed, inviting a notary public to witness the "dying" man as he rewrites his will, leaving his possessions to the family instead of the monastery. This opera, directed by Joachim Schamberger (a Conservatory student who will also sing the role of Rinuccio, the only honest member of the Donati family) is also going to be supported by the Brooklyn College Conservatory Orchestra, a stellar fifty-piece orchestra that has won high marks for past performances. "That orchestra does not have its praises sung enough," observes Mignon Dunn. "They are very good-- spectacularly good, in fact. Brooklyn College is lucky to have them."
Tickets are $10 for both performances, $7 for students, but members of the Conservatory of Music and students taking Core 2.2 (Introduction to Music) classes are admitted free of charge. Whitman Hall is located at 2900 Campus Road & Hillel Place, one block west of "The Junction" (the intersection of Hillel Place, Nostrand and Flatbush Avenues and the last stop on the Number Two Train). For more information, call the box office (718) 951-4500 or the Brooklyn College Conservatory, (718) 951-5792 or visit the Brooklyn College Web page, www.brooklyn.cuny.edu.

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