From around the world
Brave Israeli opera radiates despair
William Littler | Toronto Star | Jan. 30, 2010
Gil Shohat’s denies ‘The Child’s Dream’ is a Holocaust opera, saying its themes are universal. But the parallels are obvious and unsettling.
Nine years ago, I reviewed the premiere of Shohat’s first opera, Alpha and Omega, a retelling of the Adam and Eve story, a work also commissioned by the Israeli Opera and mounted on the stage of Tel Aviv’s handsomely modern (and Israel’s only) opera house. Back then, the Israeli-born composer was a precocious 26-year-old, anxious to show off his skills. The new score finds him writing in a less self-conscious, more lyrical and listener-friendly manner (one scene sounding almost like a paraphrase of Ravel’s “La Valse”). “Friendly” may seem an odd word to describe such a savage study of the contrast between the hopeful dreams of childhood and the realities of adult human behavior, but music often softens harsh truths and Shohat’s, with its sometimes soaring vocal lines for the mother and child, is no exception. An opera bound for the international circuit? More likely so than Alpha and Omega, perhaps, especially if David Stern (violinist Isaac Stern’s son) conducts, Omri Nitzan directs, if the cast includes soprano Ira Bertman as The Mother and soprano Hila Baggio as The Child, and if Gottfried Helnwein’s sets and costumes continue to be used. Although Shohat denies that The Child Dreams is a Holocaust opera, rightly pointing out that its themes are universal, the parallels are strikingly obvious and unsettling.
The handsome Tel Aviv production helps mark the 25th anniversary of the Israeli Opera, a company with 17,000 subscribers and a 97 per cent average attendance in a country with a very recent operatic tradition. That tradition has yet to embrace Richard Wagner, the German composer’s adoption by the Nazis having left a psychic wound that has yet to heal, but it does embrace four operas and a musical specially commissioned by the Israeli Opera from Israeli composers, of whom Shohat is now the most operatically experienced. Whether the daring subject matter of an opera such as The Child Dreams will be embraced by companies outside Israel may turn out to be the greater challenge. If the desire to be moved counts for anything, Shohat’s new opera has at least a fighting chance.