'Old Maid' resonates with modern audiences
Although Gian Carlo Menotti's opera "The Old Maid and the Thief" made its debut some 70 years ago, the comedic one-act filled with desire, despair, betrayal and criminal activity continues to resound with modern-day audiences.
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The Athena Opera University of Georgia Opera Ensemble will stage "The Old Maid and the Thief" at 8 p.m. Wednesday and Friday in Hugh Hodgson Hall at the UGA Performing Arts Center.
With its "Desperate Housewives" overtones, the opera - which is carved into 14 short scenes - remains relevant to the times, says Ben Dawkins, a doctoral candidate in UGA's Hugh Hodgson School of Music who's serving as the production's director.
"This opera was written in 1939. So at that point, America had been 10 years into (the) Depression," Dawkins says. "The country was in an economic and social funk. In our way right now, we're in our very own economic and social funk. We can really feel that resonance with the idea of a young man who would just wander, who wouldn't care about finances, who would beg just enough to get some food.
"And we also can identify with some of the loneliness that is portrayed in the story. ... There's a sense here of wanting people in your life. We're at an interesting place in our social development in that we can have people around 24/7, yet never actually encounter them. That's a special loneliness."
A Conyers native who earned his undergraduate degree in musical theater from Berry College and his master's in vocal performance from UGA, Dawkins says "The Old Maid" is an excellent place for an opera novice to begin their investigation of the art form.
"The story has
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