Connecticut Community Conversations: Letter From Italy, 1944, A Generational Legacy

Press Release: Warner Presentation

The first in a series of free public events under the title Connecticut Community Conversations: Letter from Italy, 1944 – A Generational Legacy, is to be presented at 8 A.M. on Thursday December 13 in the North One Conference Room at Middlesex Hospital.  The Community Conversations series has been designed as a means to engage the audience in providing a more comprehensive understanding of the oratorio Letter from Italy, 1944, which Artistic Director Joseph D’Eugenio and the Greater Middletown Chorale will premiere on April 28, 2013.  Letter from Italy, 1944 tells the poignant story of a Connecticut composer’s soldier-physician father and his service in war torn Italy as a member of the 10th Mountain Division.  A major portion of the work focuses on this man’s struggles with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and how his striving to come to terms with the horrors of war impacted his family.

The December 13 event at Middlesex Hospital is a lecture under the auspices of the hospital’s Grand Rounds program and is entitled “Mental Health, the Media, and the U.S. Veteran: Historical Perspectives on PTSD”.  The lecture is to be presented by the distinguished Dr. John H. Warner, Professor of the History of Medicine at the Yale University School of Medicine.  In his talk Dr. Warner will sketch the historical context of what we now call PTSD from the Civil War to the present. The presentation will include excerpts of two films made just after World War II which were designed to shape public attitudes toward the psychiatric casualties of war.  The talk will wrap with a discussion of how PTSD ultimately became an officially recognized psychiatric syndrome.

This presentation as well as all of the Connecticut Community Conversation events are free and open to the public.  These events have been made possible by funding from the Connecticut Humanities Council and the Tenth Mountain Division Foundation.  Dr. Warner’s lecture is co-sponsored by Middlesex Hospital and a grant from the Connecticut Humanities Council.  For further information and a listing of all upcoming Community Conversation events, please log on to www.letterfromitaly.com.  The World Premiere of Letter from Italy, 1994 will be presented on Sunday, April 28, 2013, 4 P.M. at the Middletown High School Performing Arts Center.

The Greater Middletown Chorale is a private, non-profit organization providing great music for the people of Connecticut. It is funded with the support of the State of Connecticut, Department of Economic and Community Development’s Connecticut Office of the Arts, Middletown Commission on the Arts, Aetna Foundation, Chevron Humankind Grants and Pfizer Foundation.

 Dr. Adam Perrin