GLIKL ORATORYE - A Musical Herstory

Oratorio by Alan Bern & Diana Matut based on the memoirs and life story of Glikl of HameIn

Complete program notes, full cast, libretto and additional materials: https://www.glikl.eu

In 1689, Glikl of Hameln (1647-1724), a Jewish woman from Hamburg, began writing her memoirs in Western Yiddish. After the death of her husband, she wrote „to expel the melancholy thoughts“ and thus left us a unique testimony of Jewish life in Germany. We know her today as a successful businesswoman, a mother of twelve surviving children, and one of the first non-noble women ever to leave very personal memoirs.

Librettist Diana Matut lets Glikl speak in her own words, adding three other Jewish women of different eras whose lives are interwoven in one way or another with Glikl’s:

- Bertha Pappenheim (1859 – 1936), Austrian-Jewish feminist, social pioneer, and translator of Glikl’s memoirs into modern German.
- Ida Kamińska (1899 – 1980), Polish-Jewish actress, director and Artistic Director of the Jewish State Theater of Warsaw who portrayed Glikl on stage. Her language is Eastern Yiddish.
- A Young Jewish Woman, a constructed character based on contemporary, young Jewish women who identify with Glikl’s “herstory.” Her language is English.

Composer Alan Bern (USA/Berlin) gives each of the four women her own musical language through various instrumental ensembles inspired by Baroque, Viennese music of the Weimar period, Yiddish theater and klezmer, and contemporary Retro Swing. As the piece unfolds, the stylistic barriers between the four ensembles become porous, giving way to musical syntheses that represent the flowing together of the protagonists’ different times, places and points of view.

Conductor Marcelo Moguilevsky (Buenos Aires) leads the 35-piece international student project orchestra with choir and soloists through Bern’s score, expanding the oratorio with interludes of conducted orchestral improvisation to add a unique, epoch-defying musical dimension.

A project of the UNESCO Chair on Transcultural Music Studies at the University of Music FRANZ LISZT Weimar, sponsored by "321-2021: 1700 Jahre jüdisches Leben in Deutschland e.V."

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Recording on March 30, 2022 in the Festsaal Fürstenhaus, Weimar

Видео GLIKL ORATORYE - A Musical Herstory канала Hochschule für Musik FRANZ LISZT Weimar