Darkling

A multimedia opera using spoken word, song, projected films and images, and original music to present the fate of a family during the Holocaust. This theatrical adaptation of Anna Rabinowitz’s poem with music by Stefan Weisman tells the story of a young Polish couple that escapes to America while their family members who remain in Poland are exterminated. It pieces together fragments of memory, from a rushed marriage on the eve of Hitler’s invasion, to the young bride fleeing Poland, leaving her husband behind. Her husband joins her in the U.S., but they suffer through an unhappy marriage, simply grateful to be alive. Other scenes portray the physical and spiritual afflictions of those who are trapped in Poland—the cold, the hunger, the persecution and death. These memories reflect the piecing together of letters, postcards, photos, and other documents from Rabinowitz’s own family history and experiences during the Holocaust.

Format: Multimedia opera

Cast Size:4 singers, 7 actors, and a string quartet

Running Time: 80 minutes

Original or Prominent Production:
Premiered by American Opera Projects in 2006 at the East 13th Street Theater, New York City. Darkling toured in a concert version to Berlin and Poland and to the Center City Opera as part of the Philly Fringe Festival in 2008.

Original Source Material: Based on Darkling: A Poem, a book-length poem by Anna Rabinowitz.

Original Language: English

Publisher:

Darkling CD available through Albany Records.
Darkling: A Poem published by Tupelo Press, 2001.

Production Rights Holder:

Anna Rabinowitz and Stefan Weisman
See also, Darkling website.

Experience(s) Chronicled: Germany, Hitler and the Growth of Nazism | Concentration and Extermination Camps | Survivors and Subsequent Generations | Escape