Can’t make the Live Show? Get the WEBCAST TICKETS below. - Watch the Webcast Encore of Elizabeth Frankenstein, Thursday, Dec. 2, 2021 at 6PM EST. The Webcast is available through Sunday Dec. 5 until 11PM EST.
NOTE: Ticket buyers for the LIVE concert will be granted FREE ACCESS to the upcoming Encore Webcast of Elizabeth Frankenstein.
TNM presents Elizabeth Frankenstein, a new opera in three acts, with music by Edmund Cionek, libretto by Maryanne Bertollo, with Gerald Steichen, musical director/pianist, and Beth Greenberg, stage director.
The 90-minute opera, presented as a concert reading, is a re-imagining of the classic novel Frankenstein from the point of view of Victor's wife. Frankenstein was written in 1817 by Mary Shelley, an early feminist. However, most renditions of her enduring work focus on Victor’s lust for creation and the chaos which ensues. Elizabeth Frankenstein allows the novel’s foremost female character to step away from Victor’s shadow into her own light.
Elizabeth is depicted as a strong-willed and unusually sensitive person; she gravitates towards Victor’s genius as a match for her own intelligence and empathy. In the first act, she becomes engaged to Victor; in the second act they are married, then she is raped and murdered by The Creature, jealous of Victor’s happiness. In the final act Elizabeth is a ghost who appears in the Arctic where Victor has gone to hunt down and kill his creation. She confronts both The Creature and Victor though the latter, poignantly, cannot see her. Elizabeth implores them to transform their worst impulses in order to bring forth a better world.
Elizabeth Frankenstein has several facets; the romance between a brilliant man and an equally brilliant woman; the tension of opposing forces--love and hate, violence and compassion, vengeance and reconciliation; and the testimony of a woman who though she loses everything retains her courage and her innocence. Above all the opera is original, entertaining and inspiring.
Cast
Natalie Ballenger, Soprano - Elizabeth Frankenstein
Blake Friedman, Tenor - Victor Frankenstein
Joseph Charles Beutel, Bass-Baritone – The Creature
Women’s Chorus:
Charlotte Detrick
Jasmine Manley
Laura Virella
Elizabeth Frankenstein is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts Rapid Live Performance Fund with the support of the Governor and the New York State Legislature.