World War I has a strange place in our collective memory. It changed our collective history and the world, but it doesn’t always get the attention it deserves. On Tuesday, Jan. 13, that “forgotten war” gets the spotlight in Midtown, not through a lecture or a timeline, but through music, story, and a genuinely close-up, personal story. New World Stages hosts The Story of a Rose: A Musical Reverie on the Great War, a one-night-only presentation created by and starring Melissa Errico, produced by The Doughboy Foundation. It starts at 7:00 p.m., and it’s designed as a lush, theatrical one-woman concert: orchestral sound, evocative visuals, period costumes, and an all-star jazz ensemble that pulls you into the era before you even realize you’re “learning” anything.
Errico’s style has always lived in the space between beautiful singing and sharp, intelligent talk. Here, she’s using that gift to walk audiences through World War I in all its many-sided American complexity: the immigrants arriving before the war, the cultural shift at home, the pull of Europe, and then the moment America is suddenly in the war. The show moves through the world that shaped the conflict and the people who carried it, with one through-line above all: the music.