The story of Magdalena

The Writers' Guild of America strike is currently making plenty of news, as did the Broadway Stagehands' strike which ended last November. Something like this had an impact on the life of Villa-Lobos in 1948, in connection with his show Magdalena:

"Magdalena ran into a musicians' strike and became a cause célèbre when the producers claimed the piece was immune from union rules because it was not a musical but an opera. After deliberating, the union announced that, since it was playing in a legitimate theater, it was not an opera but a musical, and closed it, along with all the other musicals. And you thought it didn't matter."

[from a 2002 New York Times article by William Wright]

I'm putting together the page for Magdalena on The Villa-Lobos Website. It's well-timed, with the 60th Anniversary of the show coming up, and with so many resources out there to lassoo and bring together. It's the kind of stuff I like doing. So come on over and see the new page, but it's a work in progress, so watch out for the scaffolding.