Composer Joseph Thalken is the latest and third recipient of Signature Theatre’s American Musical Voices Project, the nation’s largest commissioning program for new musicals. The world premiere of his “And the Curtain Rises” boasts a book by Michael Slade, lyrics by Mark Campbell and a crack creative team headed by director and Tony Award nominee Kristin Hanggi. Signature Theatre is proud of its reputation as one of the finest professional theater companies in the nation, winning the 2009 Regional Theatre Tony Award. Over the years, it has won 70 Helen Hayes Awards and 283 nominations. Thalken’s AMVP commission follows those of previous recipients, Michael John LaChiusa for “Giant” in 2009 and Ricky Ian Gordon for “Sycamore Trees” last season.
| On stage |
| ‘And the Curtain Rises’ |
| Where: Signature Theatre |
| When: Through April 10 |
| Info: $55 to $81; 703-573-SEAT (7328); signature-theatre.org |
“I’d been carrying around an idea, and when I got the commission I was eager to flesh it out,” Thalken said. “I first met Mark Campbell through mutual friends. When I’d go to Carnegie Hall concerts, I’d often see him there and wondered what a lyricist was doing at a classical performance. He explained that he liked all kinds of music and we later worked together on ‘Songs from An Unmade Bed’ for which he wrote the lyrics to 18 songs by that many composers.
“Michael [Slade] and I had been meeting to talk about my idea to write something based on the story of the first American musical, which is part of theater history. After the commission, we met much more. I had the working title of ‘Wheatley’s Folly,’ but when Kristin [Hanggi] heard a new song I wrote for the show called ‘And the Curtain Rises,’ she asked us to change the title of the show to that.”
Thalken arrived in the classical music world with a Latin Mass he composed at the age of seven. In years to come, he would spend time in the Zurich Opera Studio and as kapellmeister at Theater Aachen in Germany, but his focus soon gravitated to the relationship between musical theater and opera. When he happened upon “The Black Crook,” a melodrama of 1866, and its entertaining evolution into America’s first musical, “And the Curtain Rises” was born.
“I’m most excited to experience the show with a live audience,” he said. “That is the one ingredient you can’t predict.
