A Message from Arnold Mittelman After a career in not-for-profit and commercial theater spanning more than 40 years I was honored in 2007 to found the National Jewish Theater / Foundation and in 2010 to assume leadership of its Holocaust Theater International...
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
Snapshot
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.
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.
Nationality of Author: U.S.
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
HTC Insights
Views, reference and research of interest.
Lifetime Achievement Award
On September 30, 2024, French playwright, Mr. Jean Claude Grumberg received the Lifetime Achievement Award. It was presented by NJTF HTII President, Arnold Mittelman with Dominique Trimbur, PhD-Manager for the History of Anti-Semitism and the Holocaust, Teaching of the Holocaust of Fondation Pour La Memoir de la Shoah Project.
Many Questions and a Few Answers
by Robert Skloot 2022 NJTF HTII Lifetime Achievement Award AHO Winter Conference, Miami, FL I’d like to begin my remarks by asking the question that all of us have been asked often: “Why do you do the work you do?” There are, of course, many answers, but I’d imagine...