“Anyone who has enjoyed an online flirtation followed by a disappointing face-to-face knows that sometimes real life just can’t match the intensity of a good correspondence,” writes Elisabeth Vincentelli in Monday’s (6/4) New York Times. “Perhaps this is why Nadezhda von Meck steadfastly refused to meet the composer Pyotr Tchaikovsky, despite exchanging intellectually stimulating, openhearted letters with him for almost 14 years.… It is that bond … that the Ensemble for the Romantic Century explores in ‘Tchaikovsky: None but the Lonely Heart,’ a compelling play with music at [Manhattan’s] Pershing Square Signature Center…. A wealthy widow and self-described recluse, von Meck (Shorey Walker) subsidized Tchaikovsky (Joey Slotnick) so he could focus on his music … Eve Wolf’s script stitches together excerpts pulled from hundreds of letters…. Ms. Wolf’s script dwells less on the duo’s heady discussions about music and art than on their thorny emotional bond…. With director Donald T. Sanders at the helm … the text is interspersed with music performed live by a chamber ensemble … ‘None but the Lonely Heart’ makes us understand the enduring appeal of Tchaikovsky and von Meck’s story—and suggests their correspondence amounts to a spellbinding shared body of work.”
Posted June 5, 2018
