Filmmaker Karyl K. Evans’ latest, a documentary about PTSD and music called “Letter From Italy, 1944: A New American Oratorio,” will have a gala premiere showing Sunday on Flag Day and a broadcast TV debut four days later.
The stirring film’s roots go back to Yale medical school graduate John Meneely’s time as a medic with the 10th Mountain Division in World War II. In 2010, Grammy-nominated composer Sarah Meneely-Kyder of Old Lyme and her sister, poet Nancy Meneely of Essex, saw Greater Middletown Chorale’s staged production of Mendelssohn’s “Elijah,” and were so impressed they chose GMChorale to bring their music, based on their father’s poetry and war-time love letters to their mother, to the public stage. The “Letter From Italy, 1944” oratorio was staged in 2013 with the collaboration of GMChorale Artistic Director Joseph D’Eugenio of Hamden.
http://www.nhregister.com/arts-and-entertainment/20150612/meryl-streep-narrates-letter-from-italy-on-cptv-Thursday
