Montréal-based soprano and pianist duo Sara Schabas and Isabelle David will present the Canadian premiere of a piece by Pulitzer-nominated composer Alex Weiser in Toronto on January 9. The performance will take place as part of the Canadian Opera Company’s Free Concert Series at the Richard Bradshaw Amphitheatre
Alex Weiser’s (b. 1989) Yiddish song cycle, in a dark blue night | אין אַ טונקל בלויער נאַכט will be the centrepiece of the concert.
in a dark blue night | אין אַ טונקל בלויער נאַכט
Weiser’s music is set to poems written in Yiddish by Morris Rosenfeld, Anna Margolin, Naftali Gross, Celia Dropkin, and Reuben Iceland that express the realities of life as a Jewish immigrant to New York City.
“Today, the Yiddish-language world of Jewish immigrants in New York is often remembered with nostalgia and kitsch,” Weiser writes in a statement. “But in reality it was rich and multifaceted, encompassing the full range of human experience from the quotidian to the sublime.”
University of Toronto Musicologist Robin Elliott will narrate the performance.
The program will be rounded out by works by other modernist composers who were affected by Nazi persecution during the Second World War era. That includes Erich Korngold, Arnold Schoenberg, Alma Mahler and Alexander Zemlinsky, artists who fled Europe, and Viktor Ullmann, who was murdered by the regime.
The artists
Based in Montréal today, both Sara Schabas and Isabelle David are mentored artists under Barbara Hannigan’s Equilibrium Young Artists program. You can sample a previous collaboration between the two artists here.
“My paternal great-grandparents were Jewish immigrants from Poland to New York,” says Sara. “My grandfather Ezra never talked much about his Jewish heritage. But towards the end of his life, he would laugh over books of Yiddish jokes, which he spoke at home as a child. Exploring the human condition in this language feels like uncovering a lost piece of myself.”
Sara Schabas, soprano
Toronto born Sara Schabas performs a range of operatic repertoire from the traditional to contemporary, as well as performing as a soloist with orchestras and other ensembles. She premiered the title role in Maxime Goulet’s The Flight of the Hummingbird with Pacific Opera Victoria and Vancouver Opera.
Sara studied voice with a literature minor at the University of Toronto, and went on to earn an M.Mus at Roosevelt University with a Siragusa Endowed Scholarship. Her debut came in the US with the Dayton Opera and Aspen Opera Theatre. This season, her roles includes Musetta in La bohème with the Institut Canadien d’Art Vocal with the Orchestre Classique de Montréal.
Isabelle David, piano
Pianist Isabelle David has performed all over the world at venues such as the Musiikkitalo (Helsinki), Jordan Hall (Boston), Carnegie Hall (New York), and Wilfrid-Pelletier Hall (Montréal). Accolades and recognition include the Borromeo String Quartet Guest Artist Award, Sylva Gelber Music Foundation Award, and Canimex Canadian Music Competition Grand Prize.
Her debut solo album Souvenirs of Auguste Descarries, featuring the world of the titular Quebec pianist and composer Auguste Descarries, was released in 2022. Descaries was piano teacher to Isabelle’s grandmother Louis Lussier. Isabelle’s discovery of the manuscripts sparked a curiosity that led to her doctoral research, for which she was awarded a Joseph-Armand-Bombardier Canada Graduate Scholarship.
- Find more information about the free concert [HERE] (click on January 9).
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