QUARTET

Drama 

Premiére at Madlenianum
5th October 2006

Director: Milos Jagodic
Scenographer: Aleksandar Veljanovic
Costume designer: Milica Grbic

Djurdjija Cvetic, Miodrag Radovanovic, Ruzica Sokic, Ivan Bekjarev

Opening of the season 2006/2007

Drama on beauty of opera and painful transience of operatic vocals. The most beautiful example of English sentimental comedy from the pen of one of the greatest British playwrights of the time, the winner of the 2003 Academy Award for his screenplay for the film Pianist. 

Four old singers in a home for retired opera singers, who gather together after many decades to sing once again, like long ago in Covent Garden, the quarter from the opera Rigoletto, are interpreted by the leading actors of our drama stage:

Drama Quartet is one of most frequently played Harwood’s dramas. At present, this drama is played in America and Europe in more than seven languages. It was created as homage to the deceased conductor George Sholti. One might say that it is a melancholic history of opera, with reminiscence of everything that inevitably accompanies an opera: gossip, intrigues, singers’ capriciousness and eccentricity. It is a great play of chamber type for four elder master actors, in which Harwood has gone farthest in his love for music and opera. 
Madlenianum has the privilege that the author himself, Ronald Harwood, will be present at the premiére.

Ronald Harwood in Belgrade

The celebrated writer Ronald Harwood will visit Belgrade at the beginning of October, to take part in the work of the conference „Challenges of the Mediterranean“, organized by the Serbian PEN Center. On that occasion, Harwood will attend the premiére of his play “Quartet” at the Madlenianum Opera and Theatre, deliver his nomination acceptance speech to the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts (SANU), and thus become an honorary member of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts. As a special curiosity, one should emphasize that Ronald Harwood will realize his greatest dream in Belgrade and the first time stand before a symphony orchestra as the conductor. The famous writer will conduct the Beethoven’s overture Coriolan and will perform with the orchestra „Camerata Serbica“.