From: andrea_molino@swissonline.ch

Dear Radical Party,

as Musical Director of the Pocket Opera Company Nuremberg, Germany, I would like to inform you about our multimedial musical theater project concerning the death penalty, begun as collaboration between Operalaboratorio-Teatro Massimo di Palermo (Italy) and the Pocket Opera Company of Nurnberg (Germany).

The idea of

Live from Deathrow

(provisory title)

was born from the provocative initiative of Amnesty International to eliminate the death penalty from the face of the earth by the year 2000, proposing a first step of pronouncing a moratorium on death sentences already pronounced. The theme of the project would be the death penalty, but more in general, the right, that some people retain to have, to dispose of the lives of other human beings in certain circumstances.

The project consists in the realization of an multimedial opera, to be performed in different points within the same city and in different moments during the course of the same day. The opera would be interwoven with events and discussions on social, political and journalistic themes that would climax in the evening with a theatrical concert which would utilize audio and video registrations from the day's events. This theatrical concert would then be repeated in the days following the premiere and would constitute the definitive documentation of the production for that city. In the cities where the production would be reproduced, excerpts from the preceding productions in the preceding cities would be included (recordings, documentation, interviews, commentary, literary contributions, public reaction, etc.). In this manner, the opera would be enriched with each reproduction and become a living documentation of sensations, emotions and discussion which this theme provokes and which is our ultimate goal for t

he project.

The opera has been conceived with television in mind, and would thus exploit the potential, not only in a documentary sense, but above all, utilizing television language and techniques as theatrical and musical elements. One simple example is the fact that television would permit us to connect different moments of the opera in different points of the city at the same time. The television viewer receives the "global" effect of the production. With this in the mind, the theatrical stage direction will be created side by side with a television direction.

The text of the opera, which will be multilingual, will be constructed of a collage of original texts, interviews from deathrow, journalistic pieces, etc., collected within the last five years up until 2000 (when the Amnesty International initiative runs out), together with literary and poetic texts (i.e. Albert Camus, Leonardo Sciascia, etc.) and sociological texts (i.e. Erich Fromm, etc.). The text will be multimedial like the opera and will be published in the form of a CD-ROM with audiovisual material included. The objective is to create a state of the art reconstruction of where we are with the death penalty at the end of the milenium.

In terms of production, the project begins with a nucleus of people and institutions to work as executive producers and includes:

a.. Pocket Opera Company N=FCrnberg (Peter B. Wyrsch, Artistic Director; Andrea Molino, Musical Director) For further information contact: www.pocket-opera.com

b.. Operalaboratorio Citt=E0 di Palermo-Fondazione Teatro Massimo-Ars Nova (Elizabeth Lombardini Smith, Artistic Director) For further information contact: operalab@tin.it

c.. Modena International Music (Antonio CONVERTINI for organization and national and international contacts) For further information contact: www.mimsrl.it

d.. Casa Ricordi Milano (Cristiano OSTINELLI; For further information contact: www.ricordi.it) with the collaboration of the branch offices of Munich (Birgit GOTZES: www.ricordi.de), London, Paris (Ivanka STOIANOVA) and New York for editorial responsabilities.

The project has already received the explicit backing of Palermo Mayor Leoluca Orlando and Ms. Marietta Jaeger (formerly of Detroit, Mi - actually of Montana USA), two personalities internationally recognized for their campaign against the death penalty. The Basel Musikakademie, Switzerland, officially accepted to cooperate to the project. Important international institutions such the Basel Theater, Switzerland, the Hannover City Theater, Germany, and naturally various international seats of Amnesty International (Germany, Italy, Switzerland) and many other similar international organizations (such as the Texas Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty, the Southern Centre for Human Rights, the Death Penalty Information Centre, the Death Penalty Focus of California, and the National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty in the U.S.A.; Lamp of Hope Canada and the Canadian Coalition Against the Death Penalty in Canada) have already expressed an interest to collaborate and coproduce the project. The organizationa

l objective is to create a network by the end of 2000 of various partners at different levels and in different countries to enable a series of reproductions of the opera.

With this in mind, it is of enormous importance for us to establish contact with American organizations, such as yours, that specifically deal with this problem. The potential results of such a collaboration are multiple, depending on the operative possibilities of the various structures:

1.. the gathering of information and texts (interviews, newspaper articles, audio and video material, etc.) which could be included in the text of the opera;

2.. assistance in the search for institutional and political partners who would support the realization of a performance of the project in the U. S.;

3.. assistance in the search for partners in artistic management and organization (theaters, festivals, musical and/or cultural associations) that would be interested in coproducing and hosting the project.

In the event of your interest, we would be happy to send you more detailed information. In the hope of receiving your answer soon, I thank you for your consideration.

Cordially,

Andrea Molino, Musical Director

andrea_molino@swissonline.ch

Pocket Opera Company

www.pocket-opera.com