Music Department Presents "Scenes From A Little Night Music"

Adrian, Mich. - The Adrian College music department will present its Opera Workshop performance “Scenes From A Little Night Music" by Stephen Sondheim on Thursday, March 19 at 8 P.M. in Dawson Auditorium.

This performance represents the culmination of a semester’s work studying performance techniques and the operatic repertoire with Elizabeth Major. Michael Gartz is the pianist for the performance.

In the Fall of 1957, just after their West Side Story had opened on Broadway, Harold Prince and Stephen Sondheim first came up with the notion of collaborating on a musical with a score made up entirely of waltzes. It wasn't until 1971 that they came upon the Ingmar Bergman film "Smiles of A Summer Night", one of the Swedish film-maker's few comedies. Thus "A Little Night Music" was born--a stylish celebration of romantic love, essentially a fairy tale for adults, set in the enchanted birch groves of Sweden at the turn of the century, inhabited by leisure-class people, whose most pressing problems revolve around their past, present and future affairs of the heart.

Director Beth Major says, “The demands of Sondheim's vocal writing coupled with infinitely fascinating characters seemed the perfect challenge for this spring's Opera Workshop class. And, as we have all discovered, the vocal and musical challenges have proven to be as demanding as that of last semester's scenes from Mozart's operas. A Little Night Music is its own magical world and the students have shown the courage and ingenuity to enter that world and to bring it fully to life.”

Dawson Auditorium is located on the College campus off of Charles St. This performance is free and is open to the public.