September 16, 2024

Eugene O’Neill’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play Beyond the Horizon, in an operatic setting by composer/co-librettist Nicolas Flagello (BM ’49, MM ’50) and co-librettist Walter Simmons (BM ’72, MM ’74), received its World Premiere on September 15 by Teatro Grattacielo at LA MAMA Shares on East 4th Street.

Mezzo-soprano Carla López-Speziale (DMA ’98) portrayed Mrs. Atkins. The premiere took place 41 years after the late composer wrote the work.

Composer and MSM alumnus Nicolas Flagello

“I remember when Walter Simmons gave my husband, Nicolas Flagello, the play Beyond the Horizon, by Eugene O’Neill, for him to consider as the subject for an opera,” explains the composer’s widow Dianne Danese Flagello (BM/MM ’52, HonDMA ’99), who is executor of the composer’s compositions. “Nicolas hadn’t been well, and his productivity as a composer had dwindled significantly. The notion of a full-length opera seemed daunting to him at the time. But as he familiarized himself with the play, an operatic concept began to take shape in his mind. Within the first few notes of the brief prelude to Act I, he embedded the motifs that became the building blocks from which the work evolved.”

That first discussion took place in 1983, with the initial score by Mr. Flagello (who died in 1994, at the age of 66), remaining un-orchestrated until 2004, when composer and music editor Anthony Sbordoni began the task.

“My greatest hope is that performances of this work will broaden the audience for opera,” continues Ms. Flagello, “while increasing recognition of the psychological depths plumbed by O’Neill, and, of course, while increasing the recognition of my late husband’s work.”

Nicolas Flagello was a member of Manhattan School of Music’s faculty from 1950–1994, and Dianne Flagello served as Director of the Preparatory Division (now MSM Precollege) from 1975–1999.

More information here: Beyond the Horizon | WORLD PREMIERE | Teatro Grattacielo