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Alex Weiser/Ben Kaplan, The Great Dictionary of the Yiddish Language, produced by American Opera Projects

C&V alumni Alex Weiser (composer) and Ben Kaplan’s (librettist) new opera – The Great Dictionary of the Yiddish Language

AOP mounts a concert reading featuring 5 singers and 6 instrumentalists. Co-produced by The Neighborhood.

The Great Dictionary of the Yiddish Language, a new chamber opera based on the true story of Yiddish linguist Yudel Mark, who in 1950s post-war New York City sets out to write the world’s first fully comprehensive Yiddish dictionary — an effort of linguistic preservation, and a memorial to the dead.
The opera invites audiences to consider the extent to which a language and a culture can be saved, the nature of grief, and the power of language itself to transform and shape us into who we are.

Jason Weisinger as Yudel Mark

The Neighborhood: An Urban Center for Jewish Life will be an inclusive and welcoming community hub with a physical Brooklyn location. We will be a gathering place for local Jewish groups and organizations that don’t have their own space, for new programming, and for cross-community collaboration. We will produce programs to fill gaps, raise up underrepresented perspectives, and welcome the thousands of Brooklynites that have not yet found their Jewish home. We hope to create a welcoming space that reflects the spirit of Brooklyn—future-thinking and deeply historical, iconoclastic, and sacred. And that serves an excellent cup of coffee.

American Opera Project’s website

Photo Credit: Courtesy of the 14th Street Y