Teatro Grattacielo
2 Riverside Drive
2C
New York, NY
10023
212-595-7127
Season
2001: Risurrezione - Synopsis
TEATRO GRATTACIELO
presents
Franco Alfano's
Risurrezione
It is Easter Eve at the country villa of Sofia Ivanovna in Russia. As the servants prepare for Sofia and her nephew, Prince Dimitri, to return from Mass, Caterina, who as a baby was rescued by Dimitri's aunt and raised by her, sings of the beauty of the perfumed night and anticipates Dimitri's return after an absence of three years. A choir singing "Christ is Risen" signals the end of Mass and Sofia and Dimitri's return. After Sofia retires to bed, Dimitri and Caterina (Katiusha as she is affectionately called) renew their love and happines together one last night before Dimitri leaves for war with the Turks.
Several months later at the train station of a small town in Russia, it is night and snow is falling. Katiusha and her friend Anna are waiting for the train which Dimitri will be taking that night. Thrown out of the house when it was discovered that she was pregnant, Katiusha tells Anna that if she does't see Dimitri she will throw herself in front of the train. As peasants laugh and joke in the train station, Katiusha prays for Dimitri to rescue her, but then sees him running to the train with another woman and is unable to reach him. In despair, she returns to the village with Anna.
In the women's prison in Moscow, Katiusha, who has become a prostitute, has been falsely condemned to twenty years in Siberia for poisoning one of her clients. Amid the din of the prisoners, the Head Warden enters for roll-call of those going to Chapel. He is follwed by Dimitri who informs Katiusha that he sat on the jury which condemned her and has now come to rescue her. She tells of the night at the train station when she tried to reach him and how, mercifully, her baby died. He is stunned by the change in her, but out of honor asks her to marry him and before leaving gives her a photograph of herself taken as a young girl in his Aunt's garden. As she falls asleep sobbing Katiusha remembers the distant days of her youth and happiness.
It is Easter. The sound of bells and a chorus is heard in the distance from an encampment for political exiles in Siberia. One of the prisoners, Simonson, who has fallen in love with Katiusha, sings of the brotherhood of man and when Dimitri enters asks for his consent to marry Katiusha which Dimitri leaves up to her. After Simonson joins the others, Dimitri shows Katiusha the pardon he has obtained for her and again asks her to marry him, but she refuses. When he asks her if she feels nothing for him, she reveals that she has loved him throughout her shame and misery and loves him still, but she will marry Simonson. Dimitri is overjoyed to find her restored to the Katiusha he remembered, redeemed through her love as he, too, is reborn through his loyalty to her. As the chorus sings "Christ is Risen, Hosanna", they say good-bye, but with their hearts forever united in love.