The Pocket Madama Butterfly

Puccini’s masterpiece is transformed from grand opera to intimate music-theatre.

This English language production uses just two singers, an actor, and four instrumentalists (clarinet, violin, cello and synthesizer) to stunning effect. With minimal changes to Puccini’s original text and music, the poignant play that inspired the opera emerges, as powerful as ever. Madam Butterfly, by the great American playwright David Belasco, was a huge hit in 1900 when Puccini saw it in London. This story of a clash of cultures, of the doomed love affair between an American naval officer and his Japanese bride, moved audiences to tears and is as relevant now as it was then.

For Madama Butterfly Ensemble click on:
Madama Butterfly Ensemble
Promotional Video

From Madame Butterfly:
Beginning of Act I
Middle of Act I
Finale of Act I
One Fine Day (un bel di) from Act II

 

The Magical Singing Drum

A Musical Theatre Piece by Raymond Luedeke and Joseph Ashong

Using a traditional story from East/Central Africa, Raymond Luedeke, Toronto/New York composer, and Joseph Ashong, master drummer from Ghana, have woven together elements of traditional African music and dance with more contemporary sounds to create a unique blend that will delight audiences of all ages.

Ntobuasie, a young girl wanting her freedom from grown-up rules, becomes trapped in a magic drum controlled by an  Ogre, Foowala. When Foowala plays his drum, Ntobuasie must sing; and when Ntobuasie sings, she so delights the villagers that they bring the starving Foowala "chicken and rice, potatoes, tomatoes with butter and cream." But Menpaba and Enidaso, Ntobuasie's rather straight-laced parents, are not willing to easily lose their beloved daughter. Leaving all they have behind them, they set off in search of the itinerant Ogre and his mysterious drum. Eventually all is resolved, there is a happy conclusion, and some valuable lessons are learned by Ntobuasie, by her parents and by a contrite Ogre.

From The Magical Singing Drum:
1.Beginning through Kpanlogo (Cast 1)
2. Kpanlogo to Finale (Cast 2)

Close Embrace

A multi-media tango cabaret

Our Tango Cabaret is a unique blend of the traditional and the non-traditional.While a master of ceremonies/vocalist leads us through a narrative exploring the “heart and soul” and the history of the art-form that is tango, the dance team El Abrazo performs to the music of our four piece “tango nuevo” band. Our band performs adaptations made from original recordings by the Buenos Aires tango orchestras of 1930-1950, the Golden Age of tango, as our dancers perform in the “close embrace” style of tango, the style danced in the salons of present day Buenos Aires. The show also features a multi-media tango ballet, Tango Dreams, created by visual artist Jarek Obsadny and composer Raymond Luedeke. Images of tango dancers seem to float through the air, projected onto transparent screens surrounding the musicians. Our multi-media tango cabaret is designed to delight both the tango aficionado and the tango novice. This is a show that will make everyone in the audience want to learn tango, and, since it ends with a tango lesson and a milonga, anyone willing and able can give it a try, or just watch and enjoy.

From Close Embrace:
The Heart and Soul of Tango
1. Mi Buenos Aires 2. La Cumparsita 3. Sur 4. Desde el Alma
5. Milonga de mis amores 6. Vieja Recova 7. Liber Tango

Tango Dreams (Joseph Petric and the Adaskin Trio)

Video clip from Dance of Light, a multi-media show created by J. Obsadny for Quartetto Gelato

The Art of Love/Into the Labyrinth

a multi-media event for 2 pianos, actor and projected visuals

2500 years ago , on the island of Crete, there was said to have been a Labyrinth: an underground maze of caves  so complex and confusing that once in it there was no escape. What's more, at the center of the Labyrinth was a monster, a man eating creature, half bull and half man - the Minotaur. The ancient Roman writer Ovid, immensely popular in his day, used this myth in some of his most famous works, including in the notorious The Art of Love, a manual for lovers banned by Emperor Caesar Augustus and then, for the next 2000 years, by the Church.

Using text from Ovid and other ancient writers, Ray Luedeke has created a contemporary, multi-media masterpiece. Two pianists and an actor interact with each other and with floating, projected visuals created by visual artist Ron Hurwitz. This show is by turn wildly funny and then dead serious, but always riveting and entertaining. Don’t be surprised to hear music that ranges from Rumba to Tango to Avant Garde – all in the name of Love. Or is it Lust?

From The Art of Love:
Video clip 1 Video clip 2
Sound recording:
1. Prelude 2. Shame 3. Lust 4. Love 5 Anger 6. Sorrow 7 Transcendence 8. Revenge
9. Epiphany

 

I Confess, I Have Lived - Pocket Opera in Progress

I Confess, I Have Lived - a pocket opera in four acts written for 2 singers, 2 actors and the 4 musicians of a tango band - is a tempestuous love story, an intensely political story, the story of the remarkable spiritual journey of a woman, Matilde Urrutia, third wife of the poet Pablo Neruda. Matilde, interested only in her home and garden. Matilde, champion of the "disappeared ones" under the reign of the murderous Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet. Matilde, subject of some of the greatest love poems ever written.

Based entirely on the poetry of Pablo Neruda and on material from the memoirs of Matilde Urrutia, I Confess, I Have Lived tells one of the the great love stories of the past century.
It may be performed either in English or in Spanish.

Excerpts with piano accompanimnet:
1. Sonnet I (Span.)
2. Sonnet LXV (Span.)
3. Sonnet XII (Eng.)
4. Widower's Tango
5. Sonnet LXVI (Eng.)
6. Excerpt from Act I (Eng.)