Amadeus

Wilton Actor Gary Battaglia to appear as

Count Orsini-Rosenberg, Director of the Imperial Opera

in the Town Players of New Canaan production of

Peter Shaffer’s Tony award winning play Amadeus

which opens Friday, November 4^th and plays through Saturday, November 19^th

at the Powerhouse Theatre in Waveny Park, New Canaan

             “The balance of history put in dramatic context, add music, and you have quite a performance,” comments Wilton’s Gary Battaglia who will appear as Count Orsini-Rosenberg, Director of the Imperial Opera, in the Town Players of New Canaan’s production of Peter Shaffer’s Tony Award winning play Amadeus.  The opener of the Town Players’ 65^th anniversary season, Amadeus is a fictionalized account of composer Antonio Salieri’s corroding envy and destruction of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and a provocative work that weaves a confrontation between mediocrity and genius into a tale of breathtaking dramatic power.  The show opens at the Powerhouse Theatre in Waveny Park, New Canaan on Friday, November 4^th and plays through November 19^th.  Tickets are $20 for adults and $15 for students (through graduate school) and seniors (62).  To reserve seats, please call (203) 966-7371 or go to info@tpnc.org.

             Of his character, Mr. Battaglia says, “Orsini-Rosenberg is a pompous ass and very protective of Italian opera.  He takes an immediate dislike to Mozart, a young person so coarse, so rude he is an anathema.  The Count has worked so hard, has gotten to this position and he’s not going to let this kid destroy it all.” Mr. Battaglia has acted and directed locally at theatres in Westport and Wilton and has appeared with the Town Players in Penultimate Problem of Sherlock Holmes, The Sisters Rosenweig, Isn’t it Romantic, A Man for All Seasons and An Inspector Calls. He is also looking forward to directing Sweet Bird of Youth at the Town Players in the spring of 2012. He considers Lynne Bolton to be a brilliant director, who both “knows how to deal with each actor and also understands the arc of a show, making the audience take that journey where something begins and ends.”

             New Canaan’s Lynne Bolton, who directed TPNC’s Enchanted April, Copenhagen, Arcadia, and The 25^th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, says that the theatrical convention of  Salieri’s flashback monologues delivered to the audience helps her approach Salieri’s inner duplicity and seeming above-board helpfulness extended to Mozart. Ms. Bolton muses, “Life for Salieri, for all of us, comes down to small moments in time when we decide which road to take.”  She cites the scene when Emperor Joseph II yawns at the final curtain of The Magic Flute. “Not a genius, but brilliant, Salieri singularly understands Mozart’s genius which tortures him. He cannot reconcile the coarseness of Mozart, the man, with his music, which is the voice of angels, the voice of God. Salieri could have said, ‘Your majesty this is the most brilliant piece of music ever composed.’ Instead he takes the low road and we watch Salieri make the sinister choice to destroy Mozart.” 

             Asked, “What draws audiences to Amadeus?” Ms. Bolton responds, “We get to hear Mozart’s music and to know the man behind the music. The scenes that surround the music explain Mozart and his music.  Mozart takes his mundane, everyday life and turns it into genius music.  He makes us look at our everyday lives and hear God’s voice in our lives.  The journey of this genius moves the actors and the audience. I am also excited that the Town Players’ new sound system will give Mozart’s music and Vienna intrigue such immediacy!’

             “Mozart was music’s first super star, and Amadeus puts a face, a body, a life to the music we hear,” proffers Bobby Pavia (of Stamford), who will appear as the composer. “Mozart is a role of a lifetime that consumes all my emotional time.  People are coming to see who Mozart was and deserve to find out.”  Recreating the role of Salieri which he first performed twenty years ago, Eric Schultz comes to the Town Players from Nantucket where Lynne Bolton directed him in The Book of Liz this past summer. “For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?” (Mark 8:36) anchors Mr. Schultz’s understanding of Salieri and his appreciation that over the two decades between Amadeus’s London première in 1979 and its 1999 Broadway revival playwright Peter Shaffer re-wrote the crucial Last Encounter scene between Salieri and Mozart six times. Wrote Mr. Shaffer, “They represent a huge rethinking of the whole trajectory of action concerning Salieri’s growing guilt, which I had long wanted to explore in greater depth:  a need for atonement—first broached in the earliest production with Scofield—and more and more urgently arising in the man from his realization of what he has actually done with his own self-debasing life.”

            Supporting the protagonists will be Ammie Renée Brown of Westport as Constanze Weber, Mozart’s wife, Tom Petrone of Norwalk as Emperor Joseph II, Manny Lieberman of Westport as Count Johann Kilian Von Strack, Royal Chamberlain, John Pyron of Fairfield as Baron Gottfried Van Sweiten, Prefect of the Imperial Library, and Mr. Battaglia.  The Venticelli, the whisperers whom Salieri pays to bring him gossip of Vienna, are Megan Harris of Greenwich and Michael Hodges of New Canaan.  Ms. Harris will also appear in the role of opera singer Katerina Cavalieri.

            A multi-talented thespian, Eric Shultz has also designed and hand painted the set which has “a classical, rich feel that will work for all the scenes.”  His design in 2011 for the Theatre of the Republic in Conway S.C.’s production of Titanic, The Musical won a “Torry" Award for best set design. Sandra Galley who designs lights for schools and regional theatres in northern Massachusetts and also for the Theatre Workshop of Nantucket is coming to the Powerhouse to create the Amadeus light plot. Coordinating the costumes, which are being rented, and the wigs which the Town Players has purchased will be Deborah Shields Runestad.  Cheryl Petrone will head up make-up. Keeping all these many balls in the air will be the unflappable and always pleasant stage manager Kathleen Klatte of Yonkers, who will also appear in the silent role of Mrs. Salieri.

Photo Caption for Amadeus – Emperor, Opera Director and Mozart:  Count Orsini-Rosenberg, Director of the Imperial Opera (Gary Battaglia) takes an immediate dislike to Mozart (Bobby Pavia) as Emperor Joseph II (Tom Petrone), a rather jolly soul who likes fêtes and fireworks, looks on.  Photo credit:  Tom Hughey

Photo Caption for Amadeus – Cast in character:  The cast members of the Town Players of New Canaan’s production of Peter Shaffer’s Amadeus with their facial expressions in character are (seated) Eric Schultz, Bobby Pavia, Ammie Renée Brown and Megan Harris.  Standing are John Pyron, Gary Battaglia, Tom Petrone, Michael Hodges, and Manny Lieberman, Photo Credit:  Tom Hughey