Synopsis

On today’s date in 1947, Gian Carlo Menotti’s opera, The Telephone premiered at the Heckscher Theater in New York. The story involves a young man who keeps trying to propose to his girlfriend, but, well, she’s always on the phone. So the young man, deciding “If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em,” goes to the corner and from a pay phone calls in his marriage proposal!

Now, these days, he would probably have just used his cell phone. A welcome convenience in most circumstances, cell-phones have become the bane of concert halls, interrupting musical performances with unwelcome beeps and those annoying little melodies.

One young American composer, Golan Levin, has even composed a 30-minute work titled Dialtones: A Telesymphony, scored for 200 cell-phones. Levin spend nearly a year working out the technology that would download customized sounds to cell-phones placed in the audience and allow them be played on cue. 200 members of the audience for the premiere were asked to bring their phones and register their numbers before the performance of the three-movement work.

Some audience members reportedly felt guilty when their phones rang, even though they were supposed to, and one of the performers confessed that he was jealous that the woman seated next to him was called more frequently than he was!

That might make a good storyline for a sequel to Menotti’s opera!

Music Played in Today's Program

Gian Carlo Menotti (1911-2007): Excerpt from The Telephone; New York Chamber Ensemble; Stephen Rogers Radcliffe, conductor; Albany 173