New Budapest Orpheum Society: Making Sacred All the Whispers of the World

Making Sacred All the Whispers of the World In this performance complementing Eduard Freudmann’s April 23rd performance of “ e White Elephant Archive, Setting No. 3” (Bond Chapel, 7:30 pm), the New Budapest Orpheum Society (Humanities Division, ensemble-in-residence) re-sounds the songs of struggle, survival, and sacri ce from the tragic history of twentieth-century Jewish modernity. During the course of the evening the audience will journey through the Yiddish songs created by Mordechai Gebirtig for the Cracow Ghetto and bear witness to the message of songs from the Golden Age of Yiddish film. Milestones of metaphor and allegory give meaning to a historical path that passes through cities as disparate as East European shtetls and the cosmopolitan cities of the Duchess of Chicago. Repertories gathered through the research of the ensemble—works by Viktor Ullmann and Leo Strauss from the concentration camp at Theresienstadt/Terezín, Hebrew songs circulating on postcards between Berlin and Jerusalem and composers such as Stephan Wolpe and Kurt Weill, newly-composed Russian songs by Ilya Levinson—will be experienced in all their staggering beauty. The New Budapest Orpheum Society pays homage to the past, present, and future, seeking the sacred within the whispers still audible for us in the twenty-first century when we listen. Co-sponsored by the Joyce Z. and Jacob Greenberg Center for Jewish Studies.