SEMMELWEIS
A CHAMBER OPERA
Music: Raymond J. Lustig
Libretto: Matthew Doherty and Matt Gray
Stage Director: Matt Gray
Music Director: Charity Wicks
In development with:
AMERICAN OPERA PROJECTS, Charles Jarden, Dir.
Cast:
Matthew Curran.........................................Semmelweis
Abigail Fischer..........................................Maria Semmelweis
Daisy Press...............................................Woman
Patrick Porter............................................Kolletschka
Glenn Fleshler...........................................Klein
Dina Rose Rivera and Jessica Savage.............Dancers
SEMMELWEIS was selected for a special American Opera Projects workshop with legendary director Jonathan Miller, MD, and has been staged in workshop performances at Galapagos Art Space and South Oxford Space, Brooklyn, NY.
Vienna, ca. 1848 Hungarian-born obstetrician Ignaz Semmelweis, working at Europes premier hospital the Vienna Algemeine Krankenhaus, is drawing upon every experience of his life as he struggles to find the solution to one of history's most devastating childbed fever epidemics, which is killing mothers at a horrific rate. But convincing the world of his simple solution will be a battle not just against the rigid Viennese status quo, but against his deepest demons.
Working on the front lines of the deadly fever—and with decades to go before Lister, Pasteur, and Koch formulated the germ theory of disease—Ignaz Semmelweis, struggles in darkness to understand the strange pattern of disease transmission he is observing. Why are his brilliant doctors losing more women than the midwives next door? Why does physical proximity to sick patients not seem to be a more relevant factor in transmitting the fever? The tragic death of his dear friend and colleague Jakob Kolletschka provides a valuable clue, but he must search far and wide, to reach deep into his mind, into his past and the stories of others, to memories strange and sometimes painful, to see the disturbing answer—that it is the doctors themselves who are transmitting the fever, their healing hands carrying unknown particles from autopsied corpses into the bodies of healthy women. Without an explanation for these mysterious particles, he is powerless to convince the medical establishment of this terrible truth. Each new death begins to seem a murder, and the ghosts of the dead women haunt him to madness.
Semmelweis is a musical drama for five singer/actors. It has features of both musical theater and contemporary opera, and contains both spoken and sung text. Semmelweis is haunted by events from his and his wifes childhood years in Budapest, and sweet simple songs swirl together with fatalistic waltzes and music of grim death. The story is told as if through dreams and memories, so staging is abstract and flexible. The work is conceived for contemporary performing arts spaces or music theater venues, as well as small-to- medium opera houses. It can be performed either in piano/vocal form or in its arrangement for chamber ensemble.
