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January 1, 1998 | Dallas Opera
The Miraculous Phonograph Record
Composer:Claude White
Librettist:Jean Randich
Synopsis
William Saroyan was haunted by the impermanence of life and the power of memory to enable artists to transcend it. He envisioned art as a way of "holding something fast, making it seem indestructible and unstoppable." That's a good description of what a phonograph record magically does for a thirteen-year-old boy: make the melodies of Puccini's MADAMA BUTTERFLY permanent, repeatable, and deathless. Behind his mother's violent reaction to what she takes to be a reckless waste of family funds on a piece of junk lies a tale that shaped Saroyan's life. In 1911, when William was not yet three years old, his Armenian immigrant father died. His mother put her four children in an orphanage and worked five years before she was able to return the family to Fresno, California. One year out of the orphanage, William began to write, and five years later he purchased the phonograph and the record that would come to be known in his family as hrashali, Armenian for miraculous.

Title Information

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Approximate Runtime (hh:mm)
00:45

 Number of Acts
1

 Musical Style
Extended tonality; comic; sincere; lyric

 Vocal & Musical Forces
Singers: soprano, mezzo-soprano, bass-baritone. Orchestra: flute, oboe, French horn, harp, percussion, violin, cello, bass


 
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