Before It All Goes Dark • Program Note
It has been a thrilling and transformative journey to collaborate with Music of Remembrance over the past 17 years — to create stage works that give voice to unknown stories of the Holocaust, including For a Look or a Touch (2007), Another Sunrise (2012), Farewell, Auschwitz (2013) and Two Remain (2016). Artistic Director Mina Miller has been an inspirational guide for us, and we have grown tremendously thanks to her vision and leadership. So we were incredibly energized to explore and create a new work for MOR. The story we found is unlike any other we had heard.
Gerald “Mac” McDonald was a deeply troubled Vietnam War veteran who suffered from PTSD and Hep-C, among many devastating physical ailments. He grew up poor, angry and disenfranchised in the Chicago suburb of Lyons, his family’s Jewish ancestry hidden from him. In 2001, thanks to Howard Reich at the Chicago Tribune, he discovered he was the sole living descendent of Emil Freund, a prominent Jewish businessman murdered by the Nazis in 1942. Mac was also the sole heir to Emil’s priceless art collection, which had languished for 60 years in a warehouse in Prague. All of this was a total surprise to Mac. In 2002, he borrowed and scraped to travel to Prague to uncover the secrets of his past and claim his inheritance, only to find the Czech Republic had declared the art collection a national treasure that would not be allowed to leave the country. A frustrating path, but an inspirational journey, because seeing Emil’s 30 paintings, learning of his life and death, walking in his path, Mac connected with an identity and story that touched and changed him profoundly.
Howard Reich reported this story in a series of articles titled “Mac’s Journey” in the Chicago Tribune in 2001 and 2002. He traveled with Mac to Prague and Łódź to chronicle the event.
Our one-act opera features Mac and another singer — a mezzo — who inhabits three roles: Sally (a neighbor), Misha (curator at the Jewish Museum in Prague), and Emil Freund. The arc of the piece takes us from Mac’s sparse, dark apartment to the astonishing world of color, identity and connection in Emil’s paintings at the Jewish Museum in Prague. The ensemble of seven instruments includes flute, clarinet, violin, viola, cello, bass and piano.
With a one-act opera, there’s always the question of what to program with it. Mina Miller had the brilliant idea of beginning the evening with a chamber music salon in Emil Freund’s lavish apartment on the still fashionable Manesova Street; a location Mac visited on his journey through Prague.
So to begin our evening, imagine you are in Emil’s stunning salon, surrounded by artworks from some of the most significant artists of the early 20th century. Just a few feet away, gifted instrumentalists perform new, exciting works that have just been composed by Czech composers who would also ultimately perish in the camps. This is where our performance begins, with music that well might have been played in Emil Freund’s apartment.