The world premiere of the opera will be March 3 at the IU Musical Arts Center.
(Devan Ridgway, WTIU/WFIU News)
Shulamit Ran was a teenager living in Israel when she was profoundly moved by reading “The Diary of Anne Frank.” Soon, Ran began composing songs to Hebrew poetry and studying the compositions of top Israeli composers.
Now a Pulitzer Prize winning composer, Ran is still drawn to making music about the Holocaust. With Jewish painters and poets serving as inspiration, she describes her compositions as abstract with mixes of instrumental, orchestral, and vocal elements.
The idea to turn “The Diary of Anne Frank” into an opera, however, came as a suggestion from a colleague, the general director of the Atlanta Opera, Dennis Han; he had attended another one of her operas, “Between Two Worlds.”
“It's a story, first of all, of somebody who is extraordinary and who was lost to us for no other reason than her being Jewish,” Ran said. “And [the opera is about] keeping her memory alive, and through her, the memory of so many others.”
But obtaining the rights to the diary was complex. The process came full circle with the help of another colleague, Arthur Fagen.
“We had well over a decade of a search and an effort to obtain these rights…a very, very complex interaction between many people,” Ran noted. “Luckily, quite early on Arthur Fagen [was able to help]. Of course, [he would] be conducting the opera, as he conducted also my first opera in Chicago.”
Fagen is the chair of Orchestral Conducting at IU. To get the rights, Fagen spent a whole day with Anne Frank’s first cousin, Buddy Elias, 11 years ago in Basel, Switzerland.
“[Elias] was very reluctant to give us the rights and he said there might be a European company interested. Then I talked to him about my family's background. My parents were Holocaust survivors. They were on Schindler's List,” Fagen said. “[Elias and I] developed a very nice rapport, and afterwards he decided that he would give us rights to do it.”
Fagen’s parents, Rena and Lewis, escaped the Holocaust when German industrialist Oskar Schindler added them to his now-famous list of 1,100 Jews he was able to save.
Being the son of Schindler’s-list Holocaust survivors is a deeply personal connection for Fagen, a theme throughout his career.
“I tried to do anything in my way as a musician to keep the memory of the Holocaust alive. And now, it's especially important because you read a lot about Holocaust denial and Holocaust minimization. So, I think it's very timely that we're doing it right now,” Fagen stated.
IU’s first full-scale production of the opera will have a double cast, with each performing on different nights each weekend.
To one of the actors playing Anne Frank, Kate Johnson, keeping the memory of Anne and the Holocaust alive is what the young girl would have wanted.
“Anne, she had been editing her diary with publication in mind,” Johnson said. “She didn't want it to be forgotten. She wanted everything documented and her story shared. So, I'm so incredibly honored to be a part of this project.”
Ran’s hopes the opera will have a life of its own.
“This [opera] is incredibly important for me. Every story of each and every person who was annihilated in the Holocaust, each one of them had a story to tell,” Ran stated. “Each one of them was special, the way that human beings are. There's a light in every person that can bring light to the world.”
In reading the diary, even years later as an adult, Ran reflects on the impact Anne’s life had.
“When I read ‘The Diary of Anne Frank,’ there was no question that this is somebody who would've made a great mark, great and lasting mark had she lived on,” Ran continued. “She did, of course, make a great lasting mark. But just imagine where she might have gone had she lived.”
The world premiere of the opera, with a libretto by Charles Kondek, will be March 3 at the IU Musical Arts Center.
