BASED ON

Pulitzer Prize-winning play Beyond the Horizon by Eugene O’Neill.

LOCATION

LA MAMA Shares, 66 East 4th Street, New York NY

MUSIC BY

Nicolas Flagello

LIBRETTO BY

Nicolas Flagello and Walter Simmons

​ORCHESTRATION BY

Anthony Sbordoni

SUNG IN ENGLIGH

RUN TIME

Approximately 2 hours, includes a 30-minute intermission

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Saturday, September 14th 2024

This last dress rehearsal/performance is open to our Creative Tableaux, an educational outreach program for participants only. No general admission. Details soon to be announced!

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CREATIVE TEAM

• CHRISTIAN CAPOCACCIA | Conductor
  
• IAN SILVERMAN | Director
  
• TAYLOR FRIEL | Set Designer
  
• DIMITRIS KOUTAS | Lighting Designer
  
• STEFANOS KORONEOS | Costume Designer
  

CAST

• JOHN ROBERT GREEN | Andrew Mayo
  
• JOHN BELLEMER | Robert Mayo
  
• SARA KENNEDY | Ruth Atkins
  
• DANIEL KLEIN | James Mayo
  
• MELINA JAHARIS | Kate Mayo
  
• STEVEN KIRBY | Captain Dick Scott
  
• CARLA LOPEZ SPEZIALE | Mrs. Atkins
  
• JOSEPH SVIRSKY | Matty*
  

* Part of our collaboration with MyFace.

SECOND CAST

• HENRY HYUNSOON KIM** | Andrew Mayo
  
• JEREMY BRAUNER | Robert Mayo
  
• KATHLEEN ECHOLS** | Ruth Atkins
  
• BRYAN MCCLARY | James Mayo
• RICK AGSTER | Captain Dick Scott
  
• HANA YIU | Mrs. Atkins
  

** Current Camerata Bardi International Academy participants

​PUBLISHED BY

Maelos Music, Inc.

FURTHER INFORMATION

www.Flagello.com

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Act I, Scene 1—Rob Mayo’s impending voyage with his uncle, a sea captain, prompts a conversation between the two brothers concerning their differences in character. Rob is a dreamer, a lover of poetry, while Andrew, a natural farmer, is more practical, preferring the tangible results of hard work. Rob views the voyage as an opportunity to extend his perspective “beyond the horizon.” As Andrew leaves to join the family, Rob is alone when Andrew’s girlfriend Ruth arrives to bid Rob bon voyage. He confides in Ruth his other reason for leaving: the secret love he harbors for her. To his great surprise, Ruth reveals that it is he whom she truly loves.

Act I, Scene 2—The Mayo family awaits Rob’s appearance at the farewell dinner. He enters and announces that he has decided not to go with Uncle Dick. He then shocks everyone with the revelation that he and Ruth are in love and will remain together. Andrew receives this news graciously and offers to go on the voyage in Rob’s place. But their father, who needs Andrew’s help on the farm, tries to stop him, to no avail. The discussion becomes heated and acrimonious until James Mayo, enraged, orders Andrew to leave and never return.

Act II, Scene 1—Ruth’s mother and Mrs. Mayo discuss how poorly the farm has fared since James has died, leaving it in Rob’s hands. Ruth enters, trailed by her child, and the older women leave. Ruth takes out a letter from Andy, whose return is imminent, and pores over it. When Rob enters, she hides the letter, and berates him for his general irresponsibility. When Rob disparages the quality of Andy’s letters, Ruth is outraged and launches into a further tirade of abuse. She bemoans the choice she made in marrying him, when Andrew enters, oblivious to what he has interrupted.

Act II, Scene 2—Rob and Andrew chat the next morning. Andrew explains that a business opportunity in Argentina requires him to leave almost immediately, disappointing Rob, who had counted on his brother’s help in reviving the farm. When Andrew informs Ruth of his imminent departure, she tries unsuccessfully to dissuade him, while he remains innocent of her deeper intentions.

Act III, Scene 1—In the five intervening years, the Mayo farm has deteriorated further, their child has died, and Rob has become seriously ill. Ceaseless disappointment and misfortune have brought Ruth to a state of hopeless, bitter resignation. As Rob’s condition is dire, Andrew is summoned from his business dealings. He confesses to Ruth that he has lost most of his money in speculation. Rob, emerging from his bedroom, overhears this, and declares Andrew the worst failure of them all, for betraying his nature. Deliriously, he then implores Andy to marry Ruth, once Rob has died. After carrying him back to his room, Andrew is bewildered by Rob’s request. Ruth then describes the bitter fight she and Rob had had years ago, when she had declared her true love for Andrew. He is horrified and angry, and insists that she disabuse Rob of this burden, before it is too late. But when Ruth goes to the bedroom, Rob has disappeared.

Act III, Scene 2—Rob has staggered outside to his favorite spot, to watch the sun rise once more. When Andrew and Ruth find him, he assures them that he is content in the face of his final voyage. As Rob dies, Andrew turns coldly toward Ruth, who has failed to reach Rob in time to accomplish her task.

ABOUT “BEYOND THE HORIZON” THE PLAY​

READ BACKSTAGE REVIEW OF THE PLAY by David Steward

https://www.backstage.com/magazine/article/ny-review-beyond-horizon-54509/

​ABOUT ” BEYOND THE HORIZON” BY NICOLAS FLAGELLO

​Listen Ruth’s Aria Act III

​ABOUT NICOLAS FLAGELLO

Nicolas Flagello was one of the last composers to develop a distinctive mode of expression based wholly on the principles and techniques of European late-Romanticism. Born in New York City in 1928, Flagello grew up in a musical family with deep roots in Old-World traditions (his brother Ezio was a basso with the Metropolitan Opera Company). A child prodigy, young Nicolas was composing and performing publicly as a pianist before the age of ten. While still a youth, he began a long and intensive apprenticeship with composer Vittorio Giannini, who further imbued him with the enduring values of the grand European tradition. His study continued at the Manhattan School of Music, where he earned both his Bachelor’s (1949) and Master’s (1950) degrees, joining the faculty immediately upon graduation, and remaining there until 1977. (During the 1960s he also taught at the Curtis Institute in Philadelphia.) In 1955 he won a Fulbright Fellowship to study in Rome, and earned the Diploma di Studi Superiori the following year at the Accademia di Santa Cecilia, under the tutelage of Ildebrando Pizzetti.

During the years that followed, Flagello composed at a prodigious rate, producing a body of work that includes six operas, two symphonies, eight concertos, and numerous orchestral, choral, chamber, and vocal works. In addition, he was active as a pianist and conductor, making dozens of recordings of a wide range of repertoire, from the Baroque period to the twentieth century. In 1985 a deteriorating illness brought his musical career to an end prematurely. He died in 1994, at the age of 66.

As a composer, Flagello held with unswerving conviction to a view of music as a personal medium for emotional and spiritual expression. This unfashionable view, together with his vehement rejection of the academic formalism that dominated musical composition for several decades after World War II, prevented him from winning acceptance from the reigning arbiters of taste for many years. However, gradually Flagello’s works began to win enthusiastic advocacy.

In 1974 Flagello’s oratorio The Passion of Martin Luther King was premiered with great acclaim by the National Symphony Orchestra under the direction of James DePreist at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. The work was subsequently recorded, and has since been performed throughout the United States and Canada. And in 1982, his opera The Judgment of St. Francis was produced in Assisi, Italy.

During the years since his death, Flagello’s music has been performed and recorded at an increasing rate, introducing his work to a new generation of listeners. Violinists Elmar Oliveira and Midori and conductors Semyon Bychkov and Robert Spano are just a few of today’s leading performers who have found in Flagello’s work deeply felt musical content, presented in a clear, comprehensible manner.

The New Grove describes Flagello’s music as:

. . . marked by brooding despair and violent agitation, which find release in massive climaxes of shattering impact. Despite its emotional effusiveness, the music is closely argued and remarkably skillful and imaginative in its handling of subtle instrumental colours. Flagello’s later compositions (post-1958) are highly chromatic and dissonant, while retaining the earlier propensity for heartfelt melody and harmonic richness, and showing a clear anchoring in tonality at structural peaks.

Beyond the Horizon (1983) is the last of Flagello’s seven operas.

​ABOUT WALTER SIMMONS

Walter Simmons is a musicologist, critic, and record producer. He is best known as a champion of 20^th-century composers—mostly American—who hewed to traditional musical values, rather than joining the avant-garde movements then in fashion. His writings appear in reference books, including the New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, program notes for concerts and recordings, and in a variety of periodicals, most notably Fanfare, where he was a regular contributor for 35 years. He has also been active as a radio host and producer, lecturer, teacher, repertoire consultant, and a producer of recordings and educational materials about music. He has been supervising editor of the Twentieth-Century Traditionalists series for Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, of which he wrote the first two volumes: Voices in the Wilderness: Six American Neo-Romantic Composers (2004) and Voices of Stone and Steel: The Music of Schuman, Persichetti, and Mennin (2011). Simmons is a recipient of the ASCAP/Deems Taylor Award for music criticism and the National Educational Film Festival Award. He has produced more than a hundred recordings of musical works never before recorded or, in some cases, even performed.

Hundreds of his writings can be found on his website at http://www.Walter-Simmons.com.

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