The Lowell Milken Center for Music of American Jewish Experience at the UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music presents the five part lecture series How Do You Say “Bravo” in Yiddish?: Italian Opera for the Yiddish-Speaking Masses in Early 20th-Century America.
Although the names of Ivan Abramson and Josiah Zuro are hardly known today, these impresarios were among many zealous opera democratizers in early twentieth-century America. By this point, foreign-language opera had become firmly established as the domain of elites. Yet, as this 5-part lecture series reveals, popular price opera in Italian aimed at not only Italian immigrants and native-born Americans but also the Yiddish-speaking public emerged as an integral part of the American cultural scene.
Each presentation in this series focuses on a key figure within the sphere of opera aimed at Yiddish speakers, as well as a concluding lecture that explores the broader social and cultural forces animating this operatic activity. This as yet untold story of Yiddish speakers’ involvement with Italian opera in America sheds light on the connection between high and popular culture of the period, as well as on the relationship between immigrant culture and the mainstream American opera world.
Part 1: "Call Him Signor Isaac: Ivan Abramson's Italian Grand Opera Company"
According to Ivan Abramson, “Italians and the Jews are all lovers of music” who “prefer opera to drama.” This lecture delves into the interconnections between the Jewish and Italian opera spheres in the early 1900s, showing how Abramson capitalizes on the cultural overlap between the two immigrant groups as simultaneously outsiders and insiders in the world of opera to promote his popular price company.
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