An opera about a Jewess
OperaThe most famous exemplar is Halevy’s La Juive.
Heinrich Marschner composed Der Templer und die Jüdin, based tangentially on Walter Scott’s Ivanhoe.
In 1901 a light opera, Der polnische Jude, was premiered in Prague and did the round of major German cities, winding up at the Metropolitan Opera in 1921 as The Polish Jew. A French version of the same libretto was composed by Camille Erlanger in 1900 as Le juif polonais.
With the exception of Halevy’s masterpiece, each of these works caused discomfort in Jewish communities at the uncomprehending spotlight they cast on faith-based activities.
Now we have a new runner.
The Semperoper Dresden will present the world premiere on February 10, 2024, of a five-act Die Jüdin von Toledo by Detlev Glanert with a libretto based on a drama by Franz Grillparzer. The director is Robert Carsen, the conductor Jonathan Darlington. Unease is almost guaranteed.
What kind of music does Glanert write? Here is a trailer of another opera:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0nCj4_PUDT8
Saw it twice – modern opera for dummies. Unbearable!
Amen! Awful crap! The arts community should stop crying poor if money goes toward this forgettable trash.
If we are not, as the title suggested, restricting ourselves by gender (Der polnische Jude is after all a man), then there’s also Bernhard Lang’s Hiob (based on Joseph Roth’s eponymous novel), premiered in Klagenfurt earlier this year.
One of my favorite Joseph Roth novels! (The only one set in the New World, which he never visited.) I had no idea it had been made into an opera.
you forgot about the second most important work and urgently in need of a revival : Lodovico Rocca’s Il Dibuk !!!!!
Halevy’s La Juive is indeed a masterpiece.
Are you sober?
Halevy’s La Juive is about an impossible love between a Christian man and a Jewish woman, and is thought to be a plea for religious tolerance. Perhaps today it should be about a marriage between a Muslim and a Jewish person.
Not Jewess please, but Jewish woman.
For the record, Halévy’s opera is no masterpiece. It is full of mediocre music. And why should there be ‘unease?’ Are we pretending this production has relevance because of today’s political climate? The opera won’t make one difference to anyone in Gaza or anywhere else. Of course Carsen will probably set it in Tel Aviv and have the supers dresssd as Arafats.
I agree. Wagner, Richard Tucker and many others have kvelled over it, but it sounds generic to me. Is “L’Africaine” a plea against colonialism or for racial equality? There are operas that have their day and that’s that.
What was Salome about?
Teen Girl Power!
Was she halakhically Jewish?
Weinberg’s “Passenger”? Blitzstein’s “Regina”?
For some reason, almost all the -ess words have left common parlance. “Actress” is the only one still hanging on.
But the first time I ever heard “jewess” was “Jewess Jeans”. I thought it was a made-up word!
https://youtu.be/QZ1Z5TIx4wI