Van Gogh, Mary Shelley and Tchaikovsky Highlight Ensemble for the Romantic Century's 2017-18 Season

­­­­­­­­The Ensemble for the Romantic Century has announced that the 2017-18 season, ERC's 17th, will take place at The Pershing Square Signature Center (480 West 42nd Street between Dyer and 10th Avenues), beginning August 10th with Van Gogh's Ear. Opening Night is set for August 17th. This limited Off-Broadway engagement runs through September 10th only.

Next up will be Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, with performances from December 21st to January 7th, with opening night set for December 27th.

The third and final show of the season will be Tchaikovsky: None But the Lonely Heart. Performances will begin May 17th for a limited run through June 17th, with opening night scheduled for May 24th.

Donald T. Sanders will direct all three productions. Casts and design team will be announced shortly.

"I am thrilled that Ensemble for the Romantic Century can bring the breathtaking classical music and historical individuals of our genre crossing works to the heart of Manhattan at The Pershing Square Signature Center. The 2017 - '18 season is about iconic figures that create magnificent art even as they face incredible challenges. These beautiful, moving stories give us courage to push forward, to create boldly, and to find splendor even in shadow," said Eve Wolf, Executive Artistic Director.

The Ensemble for the Romantic Century, now in its 17th Season, has set out to achieve the impossible: Time Travel.

ERC was founded by pianist Eve Wolf in 2001 with the intention of creating an engaging and innovative approach to chamber music concerts. ERC's theatrical concerts interweave letters, memoirs, diaries, poems, and other literature with chamber and vocal music; the music's historical context is reinforced through its connections with history, politics, philosophy, psychology, and the other arts to create a compelling new performance experience. These unique productions merge dramatic and fully staged scripts with music, recapturing the past with a sense of immediacy that transports, illuminates, and captivates. The scripts, drawn from historical material that includes letters, diaries, memoirs, newspaper articles, poetry, and literature create an intricate counterpoint to the musical program. The subject matters span across centuries, from Tolstoy to Toscanini, from Verne to Van Gogh, all brought to life through the fusion of drama and music. By illuminating the interplay between literature, biography and music ERC has transformed the concert experience. The Romantic Century was about imagination and experimentation. Elevating the human condition through art: that is the spirit we hope to summon.

ERC has created over 40 original theatrical concerts at such institutions as BAM (Brooklyn Academy Of Music); Shakespeare & Company in Lenox, MA; The Jewish Museum of New York; the Archivio Fano of Venice, Italy; the Festival de Musique de Chambre Montréal; theMassachusetts International Festival of the Arts/MIFA; the French Institute-Alliance Française/FIAF, New York; the Italian Academy for Advanced Studies at Columbia University; the Italian Cultural Institute of New York; and the City University of New York (CUNY). ERC's programs are distinguished by their artistic excellence, breadth of repertoire, and variety of subject matter. In its relatively short history, the Ensemble for the Romantic Century has enriched the music scene with highly innovative productions that are also historically informed, aesthetically exquisite, and emotionally transporting.

The three-play season, written by ERC Executive Artistic Director Eve Wolf, includes:

Van Gogh's Ear - The vibrancy of Van Gogh's paintings is only half his story. He frantically worked on several paintings at a time, experimenting with color and form. Time became his enemy as violent fits of madness and terrifying hallucinations consumed his being. Wrestling a fractured psyche with his determination to paint the beautiful, fragile world he saw, Van Gogh revealed his struggle to his brother Theo. ERC's Van Gogh's Ear brings the tormented creativity of Van Gogh to life. "If my work is that of a madman ... I should prefer my insanity to the sanity of others" - Van Gogh.

Mary Shelley's Frankenstein - The joys and perils of motherhood, the hovering shadow of infant mortality, and the sting of loneliness and rejection merge as Mary Shelley creates her masterwork, Frankenstein. The Creature that Dr. Frankenstein produces, an assemblage of disparate elements, coalesces into a monster with a human soul. His horrific appearance conceals the gentlest heart. Through no fault of his own, he is forced to descend into evil deeds. Excerpts from the 1818 edition of Frankenstein, music, and dance interwoven with Mary Shelley's letters and diaries create parallel narratives as both dramas unfold. Featuring Bach-inspired music of the 19th century, from Liszt, Schubert and Bach.

Tchaikovsky: None But the Lonely Heart - In a strange relationship that lasted fourteen years and that was conducted exclusively through letters, Tchaikovsky and his patroness Nadezhda von Meck were united through the invincible power of a disembodied love in which they both found refuge. Plagued with doubts about the greatness of his music, tormented by the fear of discovery of his homosexuality, and trapped in a marriage to a woman who was eventually committed to an insane asylum, Tchaikovsky found in von Meck an "invisible angel." ERC honors their unique relationship in a theatrical production featuring Tchaikovsky's Piano Trio in A minor and some of his most moving songs.

Eve Wolf is Founder and Executive Artistic Director of ERC as well as playwright. Recent credits include Anna Akhmatova: The Heart Is Not Made of Stone (BAM, 2016; New York Times Critic's Pick); and Jules Verne: From the Earth to The Moon (BAM, 2015; also a New York Times Critic's Pick). Ms. Wolf founded Ensemble for the Romantic Century in 2001 with the mission of creating an innovative and dramatic concert format in which the emotions revealed in memoirs, letters, diaries, and literature are dramatically interwoven with music, thus bringing to life the sensations and passions of a bygone era. For the past sixteen seasons, Ms. Wolf has written scripts for more than twenty-five of ERC's theatrical concerts and has performed in most of the ensemble's forty-plus original productions. Some highlights include Ms. Wolf's scripts for Tchaikovsky: None but the Lonely Heart, which was performed at Shakespeare & Company in Lenox, MA (2013) and at BAM (2014); Van Gogh's Ear at the Festival de Musique de Chambre de Montréal; Fanny Mendelssohn: Out of her Brother's Shadow commissioned by the Jewish Museum of New York; and The Dreyfus Affair and Peggy Guggenheim Stripped Bare by her Bachelors. In 2009, she performed before a sold-out audience at the Sale Apollinee of the Teatro La Fenice in Venice in the Italian production of her script, Toscanini: Nel mio cuore troppo di assoluto.

Donald T. Sanders has been Director of Theatrical Production for ERC since 2005. In 2011, he directed Seduction, Smoke and Music at the Tuscan Sun Festival starring Jeremy Irons and Sinéad Cusack. Other ERC productions include Toscanini: Nel Mio Cuore Troppo di Assoluto at Venice's Teatro La Fenice, Sale Apolline, and Van Gogh's Ear at New York's Florence Gould Hall and the Festival de Musique de Chambre Montréal. He has directed productions at the New York Shakespeare Festival/Public Theater as well as the off-Broadway plays of Arnold Weinstein, Eric Bentley, Kenneth Koch and William Russo. Sanders is a graduate of the Yale School of Drama. He is the Executive Artistic Director of The Massachusetts International Festival of the Arts (MIFA), presenting such artists as Mikhail Baryshnikov, Vanessa Redgrave, England's Out of Joint and Complicite companies, and France's Comédie Française. In 2002, Sanders was made a Chevalier dans L'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres of the Republic of France.

The Pershing Square Signature Center, the permanent home of Signature Theatre, is a three-theatre facility on West 42nd Street designed by Frank Gehry Architects to host Signature's three distinct playwrights' residencies and foster a cultural community. The Center is a major contribution to New York City's cultural landscape and provides a venue for cultural organizations that supports and encourages collaboration among artists throughout the space. In addition to its three intimate theatres, the Center features a Studio Theatre, rehearsal studio, a bookstore, and the Signature Café + Bar, open to the public from noon-midnight Tuesdays - Sundays. For more information on renting the Center, visit www.signaturetheatre.org/rentals.

Performances will be at The Pershing Square Signature Center (480 West 42nd Street between Dyer and 10th Avenues); Van Gogh's Ear will play August 10th to September 10th at The Irene Diamond Stage; Mary Shelley's Frankenstein will be December 21st to January 7th at The Diamond, and Tchaikovsky: None but the Lonely Heart will be May 17th to June 17th at the Ford Foundation Studio Theatre.

Season subscriptions, from $195 offering tickets for all three shows, are now available for purchase at romanticcentury.org. Individual tickets, which are now on sale as well, are $40 to $140 and can be purchased online at TicketCentral.com; by phone at 212/279-4200; or in person at 416 West 42nd Street (12 noon to 8pm daily).

For more information, visit romanticcentury.org.