A one-act opera by Stephen Oliver | Based on the short story by Thomas Mann | Libretto by the composer | German translation by Manfred Weiß
“It seems to me as if there’s something in the air—a disease. And everyone has caught it.”
The Mother in *Mario and the Magician*
It’s peak season in the Italian coastal town of Torre di Venere. Among the vacationers is a German widow with her ten-year-old daughter. Unexpectedly, she finds herself in conflict with the locals when she allows her daughter to briefly take off her swimsuit to rinse the sand off in the seawater. The mayor fines the mother for this offense. That evening, a magician is scheduled to perform. This magician’s specialty is hypnosis, which he uses to make people in the audience do things they never intended to do. Aggression erupts, spiraling out of control…
In the summer of 1926, the writer Thomas Mann vacationed with his family at an Italian seaside resort on the Ligurian Sea. He experienced a country in which Mussolini had just risen to become the fascist leader. Three years later, Mann drew on this experience in his novella *Mario and the Magician*. Stephen Oliver’s 1988 opera follows the original story but also adds its own touches. For instance, the family of four vacationers in the novella is transformed into a widow traveling alone with her daughter, which further intensifies the sense of threat and helplessness in a foreign land. Musically, Oliver succeeds in creating an atmospheric soundscape that brings the climatically and politically charged situation vividly to life.
