An impressive ensemble of Broadway leading men and women are traveling to Romania to perform A Medley of Sondheim, a concert presentation of Stephen Sondheim's iconic musical numbers, presented within the framework of the 4th edition of the International Festival for Musical Performing Arts "Life is Beautiful."
Performing 7 p.m. Thursday November 17th at the Metropolis Theater in Bucharest, this sexy Sondheim concert celebration puts forward the award-winning musical talents of
Joan Almedilla (Miss Saigon, Les Miserables);
Angel Desai (Sondheim's Company);
Ali Ewoldt (Les Miserables, West Side Story);
Jose Llana (The King & I, Spelling Bee, The Flower Drum Song, Wonderland); and
Orville Mendoza (Pacific Overtures, Sondheim‘s Road Show, The Romance of Magno Rubio in Romania).
Jose Llana serves as the director of A Medley of Sondheim. Randy Gener, an internationally renowned editor, critic and artist, serves as the show's American producer.
With
Albin Konopka serving as musical director, A Medley of Sondheim includes songs from such legendary Sondheim musicals such as Anyone Can Whistle, Company, A Little Night Music, Sunday in the Park with George, Sweeney Todd, West Side Story, among others. A Medley of Sondheim is based on and independent from an original idea for a gala concert by director
Victor Lirio (who has given his blessings) at the prestigious Alice Tully Hall at Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts in New York.
In addition, Gener will give a lecture presentation, entitled Sondheim And After: A Listening Party on America's Greatest Living Composer, within the framework of the International Festival for Musical Performing Arts "Life is Beautiful." This forum and listening party takes place 4 p.m. Thursday November 17 at the Intercontinental Hotel Bucharest.
Taking Sondheim's own comments and music as a starting point, and joined by several Sondheim specialists from A Medley of Sondheim, Gener's lecture presentation Sondheim and After pulls aside the curtain on Sondheim's creative universe to reveal the many influences that have established Sondheim as one of the greatest dramatic composers of the twentieth century. "Sondheim styles himself as the maverick king of Broadway, the rebel genius who didn't just write classic songs," Gener states in his lecture. "He fashioned modernist scores that took advantage of dissonance and urban angst about love, sex, family and marriage to challenge the mind, not soothe it. For Sondheim, the art of writing smart lyrics rhymes with his restless search for dramatic and narrative truths."
Continuing the success gained during their 2010 international collaboration, the National Operetta Theatre "Ion Dacian" has partnered again with Randy Gener to produce and present A Medley of Sondheim and Sondheim and After: A Listening Party, both of which will represent the USA in Eastern Europe this fall.
This international musical festival is unique in Romania, organized by the National Operetta Theatre "Ion Dacian," a public cultural institution funded by that country's Ministry of Culture and National Heritage. This fourth edition of the festival takes place November 10 to 20, 2011 in several locations in Bucharest. The diversified program includes musicals, operetta performances; ballets; concerts of
International Artists like
The Tiger Lillies, Emma Shaplin (France),
Richard Galliano (Italy),
Ornella Vanoni (Italy); workshops for children; book launches; exhibitions and conferences, performed and presented by Romanian and foreign artists from more than 10 countries around the world.
in 2008 (the first edition), and now, perhaps more than ever, the International Festival of the Musical Performing Arts aims to offer the public a series of shows and events under the sign of Beauty in Music and Theater, proving that life is still beautiful.
Tickets are now on sale at the National Operetta Theatre "Ion Dacian" and online (
www.opereta.ro), the sites
www.eventim.ro and
www.vandbilete.ro .
