Yiddish operetta songs from Warsaw to Broadway

In the company of Barrie Kosky, Artistic Director of Komische Oper Berlin, and singers Alma Sadé and Helene Schneiderman, step back into the tragedy and tongue-in-cheek wit of a forgotten genre: Yiddish operetta. Born among Jewish communities in 19th-century Eastern Europe, Yiddish operetta developed a distinctive repertoire and style all its own. It became the music of a people deprived and oppressed, then crossed the Atlantic to take New York by storm in the 1880s.

Drawing on stage works and films from the 1880s to the 1930s, Kosky has assembled Forget Me Not, a beguiling collection of sensuous songs by star authors and composers from Eastern Europe, including Joseph Rumshinsky, Alexander Olshanetsky, Sholom Secunda and the ‘Yiddish Shakespeare’ Abraham Goldfaden.

Kosky leads this intimate soirée toasting these barely known masterpieces — a memorial to creators lost in the Holocaust and earlier pogroms, and a blazing celebration of the richness of Jewish culture.

This performance has supertitles.

Photo Credit:Jan Windszus