The Child Dreams (opera)
Encyclopedia
The Child Dreams is a 2010 opera by Gil Shohat
, based on the play of the same name by Hanoch Levin
.
based on it, is considered one of the most important Israeli plays. When it premiered in 1993 under the direction of the playwright, Hanna Munitz, the director general of the Israeli Opera, wanted to make it an opera. Director Omri Nitzan, who had directed operas for the Israeli Opera and Levin's plays in Israel and abroad, approached Levin about having Shohat compose the opera; Levin gave Shohat his permission shortly before his death, and Shohat, who also knew upon seeing the play that he wanted to adapt it into an opera, began working on the music. Shohat's opera is the first operatic adaptation of a Levin work.
Shohat and Nitzan adapted the Hebrew
-language libretto
from Levin's text, making only slight cuts. Munitz hired designer Gottfried Helnwein
for the production after seeing his work, which features images of hurt children, in Los Angeles.
The opera had its world premiere in Tel Aviv
on January 18, 2010 in a production directed by Nitzan, conducted by Israeli Opera music director David Stern
and with sets and costumes by Helnwein. Besides being the Israeli Opera's 25th anniversary season, it was also Tel Aviv's centennial and the tenth anniversary of Levin's death. Unlike most previous Israeli Opera productions, which for many years had no Israeli principals, the entire cast was Israeli. The role of the child was sung by soprano Hila Baggio, but played by acrobats May Poleg and Yuval Lifsitz.
Helnwein's designs included the large face of a sleeping child as the backdrop for the first act, through which soldiers broke, and the bodies of dead children—some dummies, some acrobats—suspended above the stage in the fourth act. The opera's premiere coincided with an art exhibition by Helnwein originally created to commemorate Kristallnacht
and titled Selektion, which depicted children lined up as though in a concentration camp.
Shohat denies that The Child Dreams is a Holocaust opera, saying that its themes are universal and that the Holocaust is not a subject that should be presented artistically.
and believe that with the addition of one more dead child will come the resurrection of the dead. A persecuted man enters, and the children, believing he is the Messiah, beg him to resurrect them, but he is really only a traveling salesman. The soldiers and their commander enter, and the commander shoots the "Messiah." The commander takes the mother away to have sex with her, and one of the dead children tells the mother's child that he will slowly lose the will to live again.
in style, rejecting avant-garde techniques and influenced by composers like Wagner
, Strauss
, Ravel
, and early Stravinsky
. Instruments featured include the flute, oboe, celesta
, harp, and the high ranges of the piano, violin, and soprano voice. The vocal music generally resembles recitative
or Sprechgesang
, though the mother's and child's parts are sometimes more expressive. In general, the score is lyrical and musically conservative, with few innovations and frequent use of clichés.
Rather than an overture, the opera opens with an unaccompanied female nonet. The first scene is dominated by the orchestra, while vocal music predominates in the third. In the fourth and final scene, the female nonet provides the voices of the dead children.
Gil Shohat
Gil Shohat is an Israeli classical music composer, conductor and pianist.Shohat was born in 1973 in Israel to the Ha'aretz journalist Tzipora Shohat. His first orchestral work was performed by the Israel Chamber Orchestra when he was 18. He served as the chief pianist of the Israeli Defense Forces...
, based on the play of the same name by Hanoch Levin
Hanoch Levin
Hanoch Levin , was a prominent Israeli dramatist. He was also a theater director, an author and a poet, but he is best known for his plays.- Early life :...
.
Background and world premiere
The Child Dreams was commissioned by the Israeli Opera for its 25th anniversary season, one of a number of new operas commissioned by the company from Israeli composers. Levin's play, inspired by the MS St. Louis incident and the film Voyage of the DamnedVoyage of the Damned
Voyage of the Damned is the title of a 1974 book written by Gordon Thomas and Max Morgan-Witts, which was the basis of a 1976 drama film with the same title.The story was inspired by true events concerning the fate of the MS St...
based on it, is considered one of the most important Israeli plays. When it premiered in 1993 under the direction of the playwright, Hanna Munitz, the director general of the Israeli Opera, wanted to make it an opera. Director Omri Nitzan, who had directed operas for the Israeli Opera and Levin's plays in Israel and abroad, approached Levin about having Shohat compose the opera; Levin gave Shohat his permission shortly before his death, and Shohat, who also knew upon seeing the play that he wanted to adapt it into an opera, began working on the music. Shohat's opera is the first operatic adaptation of a Levin work.
Shohat and Nitzan adapted the Hebrew
Hebrew language
Hebrew is a Semitic language of the Afroasiatic language family. Culturally, is it considered by Jews and other religious groups as the language of the Jewish people, though other Jewish languages had originated among diaspora Jews, and the Hebrew language is also used by non-Jewish groups, such...
-language libretto
Libretto
A libretto is the text used in an extended musical work such as an opera, operetta, masque, oratorio, cantata, or musical. The term "libretto" is also sometimes used to refer to the text of major liturgical works, such as mass, requiem, and sacred cantata, or even the story line of a...
from Levin's text, making only slight cuts. Munitz hired designer Gottfried Helnwein
Gottfried Helnwein
Gottfried Helnwein is an Austrian-Irish fine artist, painter, photographer, installation and performance artist.-Work:Helnwein studied at the University of Visual Art in Vienna...
for the production after seeing his work, which features images of hurt children, in Los Angeles.
The opera had its world premiere in Tel Aviv
Tel Aviv
Tel Aviv , officially Tel Aviv-Yafo , is the second most populous city in Israel, with a population of 404,400 on a land area of . The city is located on the Israeli Mediterranean coastline in west-central Israel. It is the largest and most populous city in the metropolitan area of Gush Dan, with...
on January 18, 2010 in a production directed by Nitzan, conducted by Israeli Opera music director David Stern
David Stern (conductor)
David Stern is an american conductor born on May 21, 1963. He is the son of violinist Isaac Stern.- Biography :Having studied at the Juilliard School, he starts his career as an assistant to John Eliot Gardiner, then as principal conductor of Concerto Köln...
and with sets and costumes by Helnwein. Besides being the Israeli Opera's 25th anniversary season, it was also Tel Aviv's centennial and the tenth anniversary of Levin's death. Unlike most previous Israeli Opera productions, which for many years had no Israeli principals, the entire cast was Israeli. The role of the child was sung by soprano Hila Baggio, but played by acrobats May Poleg and Yuval Lifsitz.
Helnwein's designs included the large face of a sleeping child as the backdrop for the first act, through which soldiers broke, and the bodies of dead children—some dummies, some acrobats—suspended above the stage in the fourth act. The opera's premiere coincided with an art exhibition by Helnwein originally created to commemorate Kristallnacht
Kristallnacht
Kristallnacht, also referred to as the Night of Broken Glass, and also Reichskristallnacht, Pogromnacht, and Novemberpogrome, was a pogrom or series of attacks against Jews throughout Nazi Germany and parts of Austria on 9–10 November 1938.Jewish homes were ransacked, as were shops, towns and...
and titled Selektion, which depicted children lined up as though in a concentration camp.
Shohat denies that The Child Dreams is a Holocaust opera, saying that its themes are universal and that the Holocaust is not a subject that should be presented artistically.
Roles
| Role | Voice type | World premiere cast, 18 January 2010 (Conductor: David Stern David Stern (conductor) David Stern is an american conductor born on May 21, 1963. He is the son of violinist Isaac Stern.- Biography :Having studied at the Juilliard School, he starts his career as an assistant to John Eliot Gardiner, then as principal conductor of Concerto Köln... ) |
|---|---|---|
| Father | tenor Tenor The tenor is a type of male singing voice and is the highest male voice within the modal register. The typical tenor voice lies between C3, the C one octave below middle C, to the A above middle C in choral music, and up to high C in solo work. The low extreme for tenors is roughly B2... |
Guy Mannheim |
| Mother | soprano Soprano A soprano is a voice type with a vocal range from approximately middle C to "high A" in choral music, or to "soprano C" or higher in operatic music. In four-part chorale style harmony, the soprano takes the highest part, which usually encompasses the melody... |
Ira Bertman |
| Child | soprano | Hila Baggio |
| Bleeding Man | actor | Rami Baruch |
| Shocked Observer | baritone Baritone Baritone is a type of male singing voice that lies between the bass and tenor voices. It is the most common male voice. Originally from the Greek , meaning deep sounding, music for this voice is typically written in the range from the second F below middle C to the F above middle C Baritone (or... |
Vladimir Braun |
| Commander | baritone | Noah Brigel |
| Woman Born to Love | mezzo-soprano Mezzo-soprano A mezzo-soprano is a type of classical female singing voice whose range lies between the soprano and the contralto singing voices, usually extending from the A below middle C to the A two octaves above... |
Bracha Kol |
| Wailing Woman | soprano | Lilia Gretsova |
| Captain | baritone | Noah Brigel |
| Comforting Woman | mezzo-soprano | Karin Shifrin Karin Shifrin Karin Shifrin is an Israeli mezzo-soprano opera singer. She performs in Germany, Austria, Italy, Switzerland and Israel under conductors Zubin Mehta, Shlomo Mintz, Andreas Kowalewitz, David Stern, Noam Sheriff and Dan Ettinger, to name a few... |
| Immigration Officer | baritone | Sorin Semilian |
| Crippled Youth | mezzo-soprano | Shira Raz |
| Governor | tenor | Guy Mannheim |
| Dead Child | soprano | Einat Aronstein |
| Female nonet, other small roles | ||
Scene 1: The Father
While a father and mother watch over their sleeping child, people fleeing war and persecution fill their house. One, a bleeding violinist wounded by gunfire, dies by the child's bed. Troops enter the house along with their commander and his mistress; the dead violinist is the first corpse she has ever seen. The commander wakes the child, and the soldiers become clowns to amuse him. The Woman Born to Love, the commander's mistress, humiliates and then shoots the father for the fun of it. The commander allows the mother and child to escape.Scene 2: The Mother
The mother and child try to take a refugee ship across the border, but the captain will only let them aboard if the mother sleeps with him. While the captain and the mother are in the captain's cabin, a woman on deck comforts the child.Scene 3: The Child
The ship arrives at a ghost-like island, but the refugees are not allowed to land. One of the island's inhabitants is a young, crippled poet who writes about the refugee ships he sees approaching and being sent away from the island. The governor of the island decides, as a public relations move, to allow the child to enter, and the mother tries to persuade him to leave her so he can be safe, but he does not understand why she seems to want to abandon him, and he refuses to leave her, choosing death instead of separation. The ship sails away.Scene 4: The Messiah
The final scene departs from the realism of the previous scenes. The mother lays the dead body of her child among the bodies of other children, who are waiting for the arrival of the MessiahMessiah
A messiah is a redeemer figure expected or foretold in one form or another by a religion. Slightly more widely, a messiah is any redeemer figure. Messianic beliefs or theories generally relate to eschatological improvement of the state of humanity or the world, in other words the World to...
and believe that with the addition of one more dead child will come the resurrection of the dead. A persecuted man enters, and the children, believing he is the Messiah, beg him to resurrect them, but he is really only a traveling salesman. The soldiers and their commander enter, and the commander shoots the "Messiah." The commander takes the mother away to have sex with her, and one of the dead children tells the mother's child that he will slowly lose the will to live again.
Music
The opera is scored for a reduced orchestra and piano. The orchestral music is late-RomanticRomantic music
Romantic music or music in the Romantic Period is a musicological and artistic term referring to a particular period, theory, compositional practice, and canon in Western music history, from 1810 to 1900....
in style, rejecting avant-garde techniques and influenced by composers like Wagner
Richard Wagner
Wilhelm Richard Wagner was a German composer, conductor, theatre director, philosopher, music theorist, poet, essayist and writer primarily known for his operas...
, Strauss
Richard Strauss
Richard Georg Strauss was a leading German composer of the late Romantic and early modern eras. He is known for his operas, which include Der Rosenkavalier and Salome; his Lieder, especially his Four Last Songs; and his tone poems and orchestral works, such as Death and Transfiguration, Till...
, Ravel
Maurice Ravel
Joseph-Maurice Ravel was a French composer known especially for his melodies, orchestral and instrumental textures and effects...
, and early Stravinsky
Igor Stravinsky
Igor Fyodorovich Stravinsky ; 6 April 1971) was a Russian, later naturalized French, and then naturalized American composer, pianist, and conductor....
. Instruments featured include the flute, oboe, celesta
Celesta
The celesta or celeste is a struck idiophone operated by a keyboard. Its appearance is similar to that of an upright piano or of a large wooden music box . The keys are connected to hammers which strike a graduated set of metal plates suspended over wooden resonators...
, harp, and the high ranges of the piano, violin, and soprano voice. The vocal music generally resembles recitative
Recitative
Recitative , also known by its Italian name "recitativo" , is a style of delivery in which a singer is allowed to adopt the rhythms of ordinary speech...
or Sprechgesang
Sprechgesang
Sprechgesang and Sprechstimme are musical terms used to refer to an expressionist vocal technique between singing and speaking. Though sometimes used interchangeably, sprechgesang is a term directly related to the operatic recitative manner of singing , whereas sprechstimme is...
, though the mother's and child's parts are sometimes more expressive. In general, the score is lyrical and musically conservative, with few innovations and frequent use of clichés.
Rather than an overture, the opera opens with an unaccompanied female nonet. The first scene is dominated by the orchestra, while vocal music predominates in the third. In the fourth and final scene, the female nonet provides the voices of the dead children.