On the 26th of July, the first performance of the musical “No one in front of the mirror” will be on the stage in Odessa, at the Union Palace at Troitskaya Str., 43.
The Play consists of three independent movements with two characters each, one woman and one man. Three of them are historic figures; others are fictional, the last two are even nameless. The characters will be played by Odessa professional operetta singers.
The plot:
- King Henry VI and Margaret d’Anjou (Scotland, 1470). Henry VI, mentally unstable king of England (who was also crowned as a king of France in 1431), lives in a small farmhouse, hidden by his followers. His wife, Queen Margaret, the most dominant figure of the War of Roses, comes to convince Henry coming back to the English throne. Although he is quite happy in his simple asylum, and even tries to convince her to abandon the struggle (aria “come to my kingdom of denial”), she is much more assertive and eventually he agrees to join her. In their final duet she sings about future victories and glory while he is singing on devastation and death.
- Cleopatra (Alexandria, around 50 B.C.). The young princess is trying to get rid of her anxiety and boredom by proclaiming an edict: she is ready to spend a night with anyone who is ready to be executed the next morning. The young locksmith Yanir, who is in love with her, accepts the challenge, and, unlike previous applicants, does not change his intentions and causes Cleopatra’s to fall in love. Alas, he will die in the morning, and she cannot change her order. She sings the aria “The morning is coming, it’s closer and closer and only an hour left”, and he is committing suicide. Finally, she cancels her edict and peacefully falls asleep.
- Dismissal (Nowadays, anywhere). Two company employees, He and She get information that one of them will be fired. They are moving from frustration to anger, while in parallel receiving various hints from the administration. He takes things more philosophically (“And to be interrupted in order to be understood”), she prefers to fight and convinces him that both have to resign; however, in the end only one resignation letter is going to be submitted.
The author of the Opera is Contantine Blyuz, the former Honorary Consul of Israel in Odessa, until the Russian large-scale invasion. The libretto is getting interpreted into a musical together with the Ukrainian composer Andrey Ehrlichman.
(Union Palace, Odessa)
