The Story of a Rose: A Musical Reverie on the Great War

In a unique mix of beautiful song and brilliant speech, the inimitable actress and author Melissa Errico relates the story of the too-often-overlooked epoch of World War One, in all its many-sided American complexity, in an original musical presentation produced by The Doughboy Foundation. A sparkling, orchestral one-woman concert with evocative visuals, ravishing period costumes, and an all-star jazz ensemble, The Story of a Rose is both stylish entertainment and a deep reflection on a war we must not forget. As ever, Melissa’s touch will be intelligent and sensual, as she narrates her subject with the deep resonance of a mother of three teenagers, the same age today as the soldiers whose lives she sings.

Under the musical direction of the great jazz pianist Tedd Firth and his big-band period ensemble, Melissa will share wartime tunes of patriotism and protest, loss and longing, from “Oh, How I Hate To Get Up In The Morning!” to “I Didn’t Raise My Boy to Be a Soldier”, “Alexander’s Ragtime Band” to a soaring “They Didn’t Believe Me,” all ending in a rousing chorus of “God Bless America” – a song Berlin wrote for the First World War. Acclaimed Broadway actor/musician George Abud assists in a variety of onstage roles.

Throughout, Melissa tell us the story of her Rose, her Aunt—a story of a family legend , by turns mischievous and melancholy, that becomes the story of a lost time. “Music”, she declares affirmatively, “is the one force that can connect our private memories to our common history.

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