Eric Einhorn speaks with Classical TV about Blue Monday
BLUE MONDAY IN HARLEM
DO YOU KNOW Gershwin’s 1922 jazz opera Blue Monday? If you love Gershwin, you should. Just thirty minutes long at the outside, the piece is often said to be “first piece of symphonic jazz” and a precursor to Gershwin’s later works—Rhapsody in Blue dates from 1924 and Porgy and Bess from 1935. The piece isn’t done all that often, so it’s welcome news that On Site Opera and Harlem Opera Theater have teamed to present Blue Monday in June, in a spirited, site-specific production at Harlem’s Cotton Club.
According to the presenters, “In the grand roaring ’20s tradition, there will be big band jazz, Foxtrots, and gimlets galore.” The cast includes soprano Alyson Cambridge, among others, and choreography by George Faison (The Wiz), and the entire production is directed by On Site Opera founder Eric Einhorn. We wanted to know more about this extraordinary-sounding production, so we reached out to Einhorn.
