Written by James Melo
Directed by Donald T. Sanders
Set & Costumes by Vanessa James
Lighting Design by Beverly Emmons

March 24, 2011
Leonard Nimoy Thalia
at Symphony Space
2537 Broadway at 95th Street
NY, NY

In voluntary exile for the last decade of his life, immersed in a tangled knot of neuroses, eccentricities, anxieties, and doubts, Marcel Proust recaptured his experiences and immortalized the loves of his real and fictional lives in his sweeping novel À la recherche du temps perdu, a breathtaking voyage through the unconscious.

ERC’s theatrical concert features a script that draws upon Proust’s novel, his letters, and the reminiscences of his faithful housekeeper, Céleste Albaret, the only person who witnessed the creation of his masterpiece. Focusing on the perpetual conflict between love and jealousy, the script dramatizes these emotions in tandem with a selection of musical works that emulate the modernity of Proust’s superbly calibrated language. The author’s stream-of-consciousness technique and his detailed depiction of the fluctuations of human behavior will be mirrored in music of comparable complexity, richness of texture, and sensorial beauty. The music includes Ravel’s exquisite Piano Trio in A minor as well as an excerpt from his groundbreaking Sonata for Violin and Cello, a movement from Franck’s Sonata for Violin and Piano in A major, and the highly unusual song cycle Cinq Robaïyats by Jean Cras.