BEETHOVEN IN VIENNA: THE MUSICAL

Byron Civic Theatre hosted a “reading” of the new musical based on the book Three Days in Vienna by former Byron resident, Susan Haugland.  The book came about after Haugland went to Viena on a choral tour with Highland Community College.  “I learned a little about Karoline Unger’s part in the premiere of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony,” said Haugland.  “I found that she had many entries in his conversation books.”  She found translations of the books and pieced together the story.  Although the book tells an engaging story, Haugland kept it as factual as possible.

During the summer of 2008, Haugland was attending a class at Boston University where she met Nicola Buttigieg, a playwright who had some of her work showcased by Andrew Lloyd Weber.  The two collaborated on the script and music for the new musical, Beethoven in Vienna: The Musical.

“As with all new scripts, authors need to hear what their words and music sound like in order to bring the work to the next level,” said Dan Danielowski, director of the project. “We also want to provide audience response and critique that the authors can take with them to guide their revisions.” Often times, authors request a “table reading” of their scripts where actors sit around a table and read as the characters on stage would read, but without any of the production values of a full production.  The BCT project combined the features of Readers Theatre and the table reading as a Staged Reading of the script.  After the reading, audience members offered comments to Susan and Nicola to use as they move forward with their project.

My ultimate goal with writing the book and pursuing this musical idea,” says Haugland, “is to do for Beethoven what Amadeus did for Mozart. 

Official Website: www.beethoveninvienna.com

Facebook site:  www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1014556614#!/group.php?gid=104068592582

MySpace site: www.myspace.com/beethoveninvienna