La Curandera - Mary Medrick (Libretto)

Mary Medrick
Senior Lecturer/Academic Advisor
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Versatility characterizes the career of Mary Medrick: performer, musical director, composer, arranger, conductor, opera librettist and teacher.

Medrick’s credits as a Musical Director are extensive and include such works as Stephen Sondheim’s Passion and the premiere of Kurt Weill: a Musical Odyssey. For the Dallas Theater Center, she music directed Twelfth Night and A Christmas Carol. Other productions include The Threepenny Opera, Man of La Mancha, Cabaret, Personals, The Fantasticks, Ain’t Misbehavin’, and numerous others. In workshops and rehearsals, she has assisted legendary cabaret artist Sylvia Simms, and composers Charles Strouse and Johnny Green, and has appeared with performers from Tony Orlando to Carol Lawrence. She is an active vocal coach and audition consultant.

Medrick has collaborated as composer on three original musicals that have been produced in Texas, Louisiana and Alaska. Of these, Frankenstein, the Musical has had six professional productions. She has also written libretti for three operas by composer Robert Xavier Rodriguez. Their first, Monkey See Monkey Do was commissioned by the Dallas Opera and has been reported by Opera News to be the fourth most often-performed 20th-century opera. Full-length comic opera, The Old Majestic, was showcased in 2003 by the New York City Opera. Their latest work is La Curandera, an opera commissioned by Opera Colorado and premiered in 2006 in Denver.

As a keyboardist, Medrick has performed with the Charleston (S.C.) Symphony, The Richardson Symphony, The Garland/Las Colinas Symphony, The East Texas Symphony, The San Antonio Symphony, The Dallas Opera Orchestra and for many touring productions of the Dallas Summer Musicals. She has performed in 17 countries and, in 1994, she was the pianist for the premiere of the Gershwin’s opera Porgy and Bess in Israel. She is also an active chamber music performer and recitalist, with recent programs including “Basically Baroque (2005),” “Paris Nights Ensemble (2005), “The Piano Speaks (2006),” and “The Italian Way (2006).”

Medrick is on the faculty of the University of Texas at Dallas, where she teaches piano, theory/composition and musical theater.