Melissa Errico to Bring THE STORY OF A ROSE To D.C. Region

In a unique mix of beautiful song and brilliant speech, Melissa relates the story of the too-often-overlooked epoch of World War One, in all its many-sided American complexity, in an original musical presentation produced by The Doughboy Foundation to benefit its work in support of America’s National World War I Memorial in Washington, D.C. The show is also presented by the Gary Sinise Foundation, which was established by Actor and Humanitarian Gary Sinise to honor our nation’s defenders, veterans, first responders, and their families by creating and supporting unique programs designed to entertain, educate, inspire and support these heroes.
 
A sparkling, orchestral one-woman concert with evocative visuals, ravishing period costumes, and an all-star jazz ensemble, “The Story of a Rose” is both stylish entertainment and a deep reflection on a war we must not forget. As ever, Melissa’s touch will be intelligent and sensual, as she narrates her subject with the deep resonance of a mother of three teenagers, the same age today as the soldiers whose lives she sings.
 
From the arrival of Italian and Jewish immigrants before the war to the birth of distinctly American song during it, from the flight from Europe in the “oughts” of the twentieth century to the return of American soldiers to Europe in the teens -- from the nascent glories of Irving Berlin and Jerome Kern to the great Harlem Hellfighters and their introduction of American jazz to France right on the battlefields of the Western Front – every face of the Great War, the people who lived through it, and, above all, the music that they sang, will come alive. Using her own great Aunt Rose as her avatar and the Ziegfeld Follies that Rose starred in as a frame, Melissa recreates the songs and hopes and loves of the people of the time.
 
Under the musical direction of the great jazz pianist Tedd Firth (Marilyn Maye, Bernadette Peters, Michael Feinstein) and his big-band period ensemble, Melissa will share wartime tunes of patriotism and protest, loss and longing, from “Oh, How I Hate To Get Up In The Morning!” to “I Didn’t Raise My Boy to Be a Soldier,” “Alexander’s Ragtime Band” to a soaring “They Didn’t Believe Me,” all ending in a rousing chorus of “God Bless America” – a song Berlin wrote for the First World War. Acclaimed Broadway actor/musician George Abud (Lempicka, The Untitled Unauthorized Hunter S. Thompson Musical, The Band’s Visit) assists in a variety of onstage roles.
 
Throughout, Melissa tells us the story of her Rose, her aunt — a story of a family legend, by turns mischievous and melancholy, which becomes the story of a lost time. “Music,” she declares affirmatively, “is the one force that can connect our private memories to our common history. Every time we sing their songs; the people of a lost time live again.” “The Story of a Rose” will make the stage ring with history, and with hope.