"A Hell of a Noble Story"

If it had not been for these thing, I might have live out my life talking at street corners to scorning men. I might have die unmarked, unknown, a failure. Now we are not a failure . . .

These famous words, written by Bartolomeo Vanzetti shortly before his execution with Nicolo Sacco in 1927, may well be sung before long from the stage of the Metropolitan Opera House--and quite an aria they would make for Leonard Warren or Giorgio Tozzi. Last week the Met announced that it has taken an option on a Sacco-Vanzetti opera by 55-year-old Composer Marc Blitzstein, to be written on commission from the Ford Foundation.

As a young music student in the '20s, Composer Blitzstein (Regina, The Cradle Will Rock) was an avid follower of the Sacco-Vanzetti case. He felt, like many other Americans, that the two anarchists were innocent and "were not being executed for what they were tried for" (shooting down a paymaster and his guard in a 1920 payroll holdup in South Braintree, Mass.). In 1932 Blitzstein used the theme for a one-act opera titled Condemned. The work was never produced (it was burdened with, among other things, four choruses), and Blitzstein says he forgot all about it. Last summer an Italian critic reminded him of the work, and he immediately began thinking of a longer opera based on the same theme.

"This," says Composer Blitzstein, "is a hell of a noble story. It is a great and noble theme."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.