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Arts & Entertainment

Amadeus

Greenwich’s Megan Harris to appear as a Venticelli & Opera Star Katerina Cavalieri

in the Town Players of New Canaan’s production

of Peter Shaffer’s Tony award winning play Amadeus

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

at the Powerhouse Theatre in Waveny Park, New Canaan

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             Megan Harris, who grew up in Greenwich, was vice president of Thespian Drama Honors Theatre and a member of Madrigals at Greenwich High School, and recently graduated from James Madison University, is following her passion to become a fine actress.  In the Town Players of New Canaan’s production of Peter Shaffer’s Tony Award winning play Amadeus, Ms. Harris will portray one of the Venticelli, the whisperers whom composer Antonio Salieri pays to bring him the gossip and slander of Vienna, as well as the silent role of opera star Katerina Cavalieri, who had affairs with both Mozart and Salieri.  Megan first worked with Amadeus director Lynne Bolton when she appeared with the Town Players last spring as Marcy Park in The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee.  To rationalize how she as a Venticelli has been able to gain access to high society, Ms. Harris and Ms. Bolton have devised her back story. She sees herself as a beautiful, witty and intelligent courtesan, welcomed at Vienna’s best salons and also willing to backstab in order to bring to Salieri the information he requires to flourish at court. 

            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, located at 677 South Avenue in Waveny Park, New Canaan, on Friday, November 4th and plays through November 19th.  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.

             Lynne Bolton, who directed TPNC’s Enchanted April, Copenhagen, Arcadia, and The 25th 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, Gary Battaglia of Wilton as Count Orsini-Rosenberg, Director of the Imperial Opera, John Pyron of Fairfield as Baron Gottfried Van Sweiten, Prefect of the Imperial Library.  The Venticelli, the whisperers whom Salieri pays to bring him gossip of Vienna, are Megan Harris of Greenwich and Michael Hodges of New Canaan.  Stage Manager Kathleen Klatte of Yonkers will play the silent role of Mrs. Salieri.

            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

Photo Caption for Amadeus – the Venticelli, Salieri and Lynne Bolton: Actors Megan Harris, Eric Schultz and Michael Hodges listen to director Lynne Bolton explain the action of the Venticelli, those whisperers whom composer Antonio Salieri hires to bring him the slander and gossip circulating around Vienna in the Town Players of New Canaan’s production of Peter Shaffer’s Amadeus.  So, Maggie:  Left to right:  Megan Harris (Venticelli and Katerina Cavalieri), Eric Schultz (Salieri), Michael Hodges (Venticelli), and director Lynne Bolton.  Photo Credit:  Tom Hughey

 

 

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