TWO REMAIN

COMPOSER LIBRETTIST JAKE HEGGIE GENE SCHEER

CO-CONDUCTORS

JOHN BARIL & BRANDON ELDREDGE DIRECTOR DAN WALLACE MILLER COSTUME DESIGNER BETTINA BIERLY WIG/MAKEUP DESIGNER JAMES P. McGOUGH CHORUS MASTER BRANDON ELDREDGE MUSICAL PREPARATION MICHAEL BAITZER, JEREMY REGER STAGE MANAGER EVA SCHRAMM ASSISTANT STAGE MANAGER ERIN McNELEY-PHELPS

Source material for the libretto includes documents and journals in the US Holocaust Memorial Museum, Zywulska's I Survived Auschwitz (1946), as well as various interviews, including several collected from the film Paragraph 175, directed by Rob Epstein & Jeffrey Friedman. (Copyright Reflexive Image, Inc. Used by permission. All Rights Reserved.)

This opera was commissioned by Music of Remembrance (Mina Miller, founder and artistic director) and made possible by a generous award from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Music of Remembrance Commissioning Circle. First Performance: May 22, 2016 at Nordstrom Recital Hall at Benaryoa Hall, Seattle, WA.

BACANI MCQUEEN GOODE BARKIDJIJA

DUBIL STANTON OLDS

MARIOLA SARAH RACHEL BACANI KRYSTYNA ZYWULSKA TESSA McQUEEN KRYSIA CATHERINE GOODE ZOSIA GABRIELLE BARKIDJIJA EDKA MELANIE DUBIL WALA GABRIELLE BARKIDJIJA MANFRED SEAN STANTON GAD BECK CURT OLDS

This production features members of the Bonfils-Stanton Foundation Artists Training Program.

CENTRAL CITY OPERA FESTIVAL SPONSORS Avenir Foundation, Inc. • Pamela and Louis Bansbach • Central City Opera House Association Endowment Fund Colorado Creative Industries • Lanny and Sharon Martin • Heather and Mike Miller Citizens of the Scientific & Cultural Facilities District • U.S. Small Business Administration PRESENTING SPONSORS Bonfils-Stanton Foundation • The Denver Foundation • Tyson Dines III • Mr. Newell M. Grant • John W. Kure and Cheryl L. Solich Lizabeth A. Lynner and James L. Palenchar • The Virginia W. Hill Foundation PRODUCTION SPONSORS Richard and Doris Cross • Galen and Ada Belle Spencer Foundation • Anne and Tom McGonagle Temple Hoyne Buell Foundation • Buzz and George Ann Victor

PERFORMANCE SPONSORS Mr. and Mrs. Gerald L. Bader, Jr. • Heidi Burose • El Pomar Foundation • Mr. and Mrs. Martin J. Erzinger Beverlee Henry Fullerton • National Endowment for the Arts • Mr. Daniel L. Ritchie • Dr. Sarah K. Scott and Mr. Kevin Kearney Mr. and Mrs. Robert A. Unger • Western Colorado Community Foundation • Mr. and Mrs. Charles H. Woolley II

Her Jewish identity hidden, Krystyna Zywulska was a political prisoner at Auschwitz-Birkenau. In secret, she composed lyrics to inspire fellow prisoners, even as she carried out her harrowing job in the Effektenkammer: cataloguing the personal effects of thousands of women and children before they were murdered in the gas chambers next store. Many years after the war, she is asked by a journalist to share her stories and record them on a tape player. Haunted and helped by the ghosts of her past – Zosia, Edka, Mariola and her younger self, Krysia – she struggles to find the words.

Gad Beck’s first true love was the poet Manfred Lewin, who was 19 when he and his entire family were murdered in Auschwitz. In the many years since the war, Gad has tried his best to forget what happened, but he keeps the book of Manfred’s original poems close by. As an old man, he is visited by Manfred’s ghost one night. As Manfred implores Gad to remember and celebrate their love, the painful truth of their stories and fates emerges. It is estimated that more than 100,000 men and women were imprisoned for homosexuality during the Holocaust; it is not known how many thousands were murdered. Even after the war was over, Paragraph 175, the German law prohibiting homosexuality, remained in effect until 1969.

TWO REMAIN was originally created as three separate pieces for the Music of Remembrance organization. Through concerts, educational programs, recordings and commissioned pieces, the organization was formed to honor lives impacted by the Holocaust through music.

In 2007, composer Jake Heggie accepted a commission from Music of Remembrance to create “For a Look or a Touch,” a work that speaks to the experiences of the German homosexual population, in both the oppression and resistance to it. Beginning in 1933, the Nazi regime harassed and dismantled Germany’s gay communities. They arrested about 100,000 men under Paragraph 175, the statute of the German criminal code that banned sexual relations between men. Approximately 50% of these men were convicted and between 5,000 and 15,000 men were imprisoned in concentration camps.

Inspired by the documentary film, Paragraph 175, Heggie connected with librettist Gene Scheer to find a narrative that could fully capture the emotional weight of the subject matter. Scheer came across Manfred Lewin’s journal written for his lover, Gad Beck, and it became clear that these two pieces of inspiration should be the foundation for this commission.

In 1942, Lewin and his family were taken to a predeportation camp. Beck donned a Hitler Youth uniform and attempted to rescue Lewin from the camp. He came close, but Lewin couldn’t stand to leave his family behind. Lewin returned to the camp to be with his family and Beck never saw him again. The entire family was killed at Auschwitz. Beck evaded the Nazis for most of the duration of World War II, however, shortly before the end of the war, he was betrayed by a spy and was arrested and held captive in a transit camp in Berlin. After he was released and the war ended, he helped organize efforts to support Jewish survivors and continued to tell the important stories of those who did not survive.

YEARS LATER, in 2012 and 2013, Heggie and Scheer created two more commissions for Music of Remembrance: “Another Sunrise” and “Farewell, Auschwitz,” based on the life, lyrics and poetry of Polish resistance member Krystyna Zywulska.

Zywulska was born Sonia Landau in Lódz, Poland, where she completed her schooling at a Jewish gymnasium before pursuing law in Warsaw. During the Nazi occupation, she was prevented from further study and the entire family was relocated to the Warsaw ghetto. To avoid capture, she assumed a false identity, Zofia Wiśniewska, and joined the Polish resistance, providing aid to Jews-in-hiding. She was arrested in 1943, assumed the identity of Krystyna Zywulska, and was transported to Auschwitz as a political prisoner.

Prior to being sent to Auschwitz, Zywulska had not written a single song or poem, however, it became her way to cope with the horror of life in the camp. Her work was passed around to other prisoners by word-of-mouth and became their anthems. Her notoriety as the “camp poet” landed her a job at the camp’s Effektenkammer where she took inventory of the personal belongings that thousands of women and children brought with them to the camp. While it was considered a “premium job” at the camp, in many cases, she was cataloguing a prisoner’s possessions right before they were murdered in the gas chambers.

Zywulska managed to escape in 1945 and immediately started documenting her experiences. She was asked by a journalist to share her stories and record them on a tape player, which forms the narrative structure for “Farewell, Auschwitz.” She continued to share her experiences and struggles through articles, interviews and books, including her memoir I Survived Auschwitz, which inspired “Another Sunrise.” Until her death in 1992, Zywulska found herself constantly trying to find the right words to fully express the devastation and trauma that impacted millions of lives.

WE LIVE IN A WORLD where we should not need to be reminded of genocide and atrocity. There is a tendency to approach the experiences of Holocaust survivors with a sense of numb distance. Surely the enormity of what they endured is something trapped in the past. The stories Two Remain tells belong to Krystyna Zywulska, born Sonia Landau, who was sent to Auschwitz as a political prisoner using a fake identity to hide her Jewish heritage and upbringing, and Gad Beck, who lost his lover Manfred to a Gestapo sting targeting young gay lovers. Krystyna was forced to work in Birkenau’s Effektenkammer, categorizing the belongings of those sent to the crematoria. She worked in the shadow of the chimneys and survived the unendurable, eventually escaping the death march away from Auschwitz as the Nazis attempted to cover up their atrocities by hiding for hours in a bale of hay. Gad and Manfred were two of the estimated 100,000 men who were arrested by the Gestapo. All it took to be sent to the camps was someone overseeing a loving glance or even a lingering touch of another’s arm. Krystyna went on to publish the first Polish recounting of a survivor’s experiences in 1946 – just one year after her escape – but she didn’t publicly mention her birth name or Jewish heritage until the 1960s. Paragraph 175, the subsection of the German Criminal Code that outlawed homosexuality and took away Gad’s freedom and Manfred’s life, remained law as the Nazis had

Let Gad and Krystyna ever remind us to be vigilant and compassionate, and to ensure that their experiences are never repeated. amended it in West Germany until 1969, when its prescripts were loosened slightly. During that time 50,000 young gay lovers were persecuted and imprisoned by the Federal Republic of Germany. Paragraph 175 was not fully repealed until 1994. The echoes of these institutionalized prejudices sounded far past the liberation of the camps in 1945, and indeed echo still. To quote Alain Resnais’ Night and Fog, “We survey these ruins with a heartfelt gaze, certain the old monster lies crushed beneath the rubble. We pretend to regain hope as the image recedes, as though we’ve been cured of that plague. We tell ourselves it was all confined to one country, one point in time. We turn a blind eye to what surrounds us and a deaf ear to the never-ending cries.” Let Gad and Krystyna ever remind us to be vigilant and compassionate, and to ensure that their experiences are never repeated.

Dan Wallace Miller