Plot summary
The German narrator describes a trip by his family to the fictional seaside town of Torre di Venere, Italy (a fictional town based on the touristic city of Forte dei Marmi) in the 1920s. The stay becomes unpleasant, partly because he finds the Italian people had become too nationalistic.
The family attends a performance by a magician and hypnotist who goes by the name "Cavaliere Cipolla", who uses his mental powers in an abusive or fascist way to control his audience. The magician, whose body is somehow disfigured but who has a strong mind, represents the mesmerizing power of authoritarian leaders in Europe at the time — he is autocratic, misuses power, and is able to subjugate the crowd, counterbalancing his inferiority complex by artificially boosting his self-confidence.
Cipolla's assassination by Mario, a native of Torre di Venere who was the last one abused by the magician on stage, is not seen as a tragedy but as liberation by the author and the audience.
Adaptations
The story/novel has been adapted several times for the operatic stage. Stephen Oliver's adaptation was premiered in 1988 at the Battignano Festival. 1989 saw a one-act opera by the Hungarian composer János Vajda to a libretto by Gábor Bókkon. A recording was issued in 1990 on the Hungaroton label.
A three-hour-long opera adaptation by composer Harry Somers with lyrics by Rod Anderson premiered 19 May 1992 at the Elgin Theatre, Toronto. Mario and the Magician was adapted into an English opera by librettist J. D. McClatchy and composer Francis Thorne. It was first performed in 2005 by the Center for Contemporary Opera in the auditorium of Hunter College. A recording of this production was released on compact disc by Albany Records in 2006. The original cast included Justin Vickers as Mario, Larry Small, Jessica Grigg, Wendy Brown, Beata Safari, Sankofa Sarah Wade, Jim Gaylord, Eric Jordan, Isai Jess Muñoz, Leandra Ramm, Richard Cassell, Jason Cammorata and Nathan Resika.
There is also a 1994 film with Klaus Maria Brandauer as Cipolla and Julian Sands as the patriarch, directed by Brandauer.
Briscula the Magician is an operatic adaptation by Bob Misbin with music by Frances Pollock. It was performed in Silver Spring, Maryland in March 2020 by Bel Cantanti Opera. In this adaptation the magician prevails. This change reflects the history of the ascendance of fascism in Europe not yet evident when Mann published his story in 1929.
As noted by Dr. Mark Dreisonstok in Maryland Theatre Guide, March 7 2020, this opera is an "accessible entry point" into the work of Thomas Mann.
Klaus Maria Brandauer is an Austrian actor and director. He is also a professor at the Max Reinhardt Seminar.
Paul Thomas Mann was a German novelist, short story writer, social critic, philanthropist, essayist, and the 1929 Nobel Prize in Literature laureate. His highly symbolic and ironic epic novels and novellas are noted for their insight into the psychology of the artist and the intellectual. His analysis and critique of the European and German soul used modernized versions of German and Biblical stories, as well as the ideas of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Arthur Schopenhauer.
The Threepenny Opera is a 1928 German "play with music" by Bertolt Brecht, adapted from a translation by Elisabeth Hauptmann of John Gay's 18th-century English ballad opera, The Beggar's Opera, and four ballads by François Villon, with music by Kurt Weill. Although there is debate as to how much, if any, contribution Hauptmann might have made to the text, Brecht is usually listed as sole author.
La bohème is an opera in four acts, composed by Giacomo Puccini between 1893 and 1895 to an Italian libretto by Luigi Illica and Giuseppe Giacosa, based on Scènes de la vie de bohème (1851) by Henri Murger. The story is set in Paris around 1830 and shows the Bohemian lifestyle of a poor seamstress and her artist friends.
A libretto is the text used in, or intended for, an extended musical work such as an opera, operetta, masque, oratorio, cantata or musical. The term libretto is also sometimes used to refer to the text of major liturgical works, such as the Mass, requiem and sacred cantata, or the story line of a ballet.
[[File:1876 'Faust' by Goethe, decorated by Rudolf Seib, large German edition 51x38cm, from Tamoikin Art Fund.jpg|thumb|1876 'Faust' by Goethe, decorated by Rudolf Seitz, large German edition {{Convert|51|x|38|cm|in|abbr=on]]
Death in Venice (German: Der Tod in Venedig) is a novella by German author Thomas Mann, published in 1912. It presents an ennobled writer who visits Venice and is liberated, uplifted, and then increasingly obsessed by the sight of a boy in a family of Polish tourists—Tadzio, a nickname for Tadeusz. Tadzio was likely based on a boy named Władzio whom Mann had observed during his 1911 visit to the city.
Rinaldo is an opera by George Frideric Handel, composed in 1711, and was the first Italian language opera written specifically for the London stage. The libretto was prepared by Giacomo Rossi from a scenario provided by Aaron Hill, and the work was first performed at the Queen's Theatre in London's Haymarket on 24 February 1711. The story of love, war and redemption, set at the time of the First Crusade, is loosely based on Torquato Tasso's epic poem Gerusalemme liberata, and its staging involved many original and vivid effects. It was a great success with the public, despite negative reactions from literary critics hostile to the contemporary trend towards Italian entertainment in English theatres.
Duke Bluebeard's Castle is a one-act Symbolist opera by composer Béla Bartók to a Hungarian libretto by his friend and poet Béla Balázs. Based on the French folk legend, or conte populaire, as told by Charles Perrault, it lasts about an hour and deploys just two singing characters: Bluebeard and his newest wife Judith ; the two have just eloped and she is coming home to his castle for the first time.
Song of Norway is an operetta written in 1944 by Robert Wright and George Forrest, adapted from the music of Edvard Grieg and the book by Milton Lazarus and Homer Curran. A very loose film adaptation with major changes to both the book and music was released in 1970.
Woyzeck is a stage play written by Georg Büchner. Büchner wrote the play between July and October 1836, yet left it incomplete at his death in February 1837. The play first appeared in 1877 in a heavily edited version by Karl Emil Franzos, and was first performed at the Residence Theatre in Munich on 8 November 1913.
Doctor Faustus is a German novel written by Thomas Mann, begun in 1943 and published in 1947 as Doktor Faustus: Das Leben des deutschen Tonsetzers Adrian Leverkühn, erzählt von einem Freunde.
L'incoronazione di Poppea is an Italian opera by Claudio Monteverdi. It was Monteverdi's last opera, with a libretto by Giovanni Francesco Busenello, and was first performed at the Teatro Santi Giovanni e Paolo in Venice during the 1643 carnival season. One of the first operas to use historical events and people, it describes how Poppaea, mistress of the Roman emperor Nero, is able to achieve her ambition and be crowned empress. The opera was revived in Naples in 1651, but was then neglected until the rediscovery of the score in 1888, after which it became the subject of scholarly attention in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Since the 1960s, the opera has been performed and recorded many times.
Der Graf von Luxemburg is an operetta in three acts by Franz Lehár to a German libretto by Alfred Willner, Robert Bodanzky, and Leo Stein. A Viennese take on bohemian life in Paris at the beginning of the 20th century, the story revolves around an impoverished aristocrat and a glamorous opera singer who have entered into a sham marriage without ever seeing each other and later fall in love at first sight, unaware that they are already husband and wife.
Das Dreimäderlhaus, adapted into English-language versions as Blossom Time and Lilac Time, is a Viennese pastiche operetta with music by Franz Schubert, rearranged by Heinrich Berté (1857–1924), and a libretto by Alfred Maria Willner and Heinz Reichert. The work gives a fictionalized account of Schubert's romantic life, and the story was adapted from the 1912 novel Schwammerl by Rudolf Hans Bartsch (1873–1952). Originally the score was mostly Berté, with just one piece of Schubert's, but the producers required Berté to discard his score and create a pasticcio of Schubert music.
The Story of a Real Man is an opera in four acts by the Russian composer Sergei Prokofiev, his opus 117. It was written from 1947 to 1948, and was his last opera.
János Vajda is a Hungarian composer.
Mario and the Magician is a 1994 German-language drama film directed by Klaus Maria Brandauer, based on the 1929 novella of the same name by Thomas Mann. It was entered into the 19th Moscow International Film Festival where Lajos Koltai won the Special Silver St. George for the Director of Photography.
The Italian Straw Hat is a five-act comedy by Eugène Labiche and Marc-Michel. It premiered at the Théâtre du Palais-Royal in Paris on 14 August 1851. It has been adapted for the cinema in French, English, German, Czech and Russian, and as a musical play in English and Italian versions. The piece remains regularly staged in France, where it entered the repertoire of the Comédie-Française in Paris and of theatres in other French cities.
