Who Says Opera Is Always Long? Opera Excerpts for Yiddish Speakers in Early Twentieth-Century America

Yiddish Civilization Lecture Series See all lectures » Admission: Free Watch the video

Daniela Smolov Levy | Delivered in English.

When we think of opera, we typically imagine a long, large-scale musical-dramatic spectacle with highly trained singers, performed in an opera house for elite audiences. But opera in America has had an extensive cultural presence in the form of excerpts aimed at the general public. Particularly enthusiastic consumers of such excerpts existed among Yiddish-speaking Jews in early twentieth-century America, a seemingly unlikely audience for opera. This lecture demonstrates the extent of this public’s engagement with operatic excerpts in the popular sphere. Drawing on evidence from diverse sources including the Yiddish press, concert programs, recordings, commercial sheet music, and the music of the Yiddish theater, this lecture brings to light a little-known arena of Jewish immigrant engagement with opera. In doing so, it also considers the confluence of cultural forces, both mainstream American trends and uniquely Jewish ones, that drove Yiddish speakers’ interest in opera at this particular historical moment.

About the Speaker

Daniela Smolov Levy is a musicologist who studies the history of popularly oriented opera in America. She is currently a research fellow (working remotely) at Tel Aviv University as part of a collaborative project that explores early twentieth-century popular Yiddish theater. She is also a research fellow at UCLA, organizing a series of talks leading up to a conference in 2024 on the topic of Jews and cultural boundaries in music, theater, and film in America. Daniela is currently working on a book about Yiddish speakers’ engagement with opera in early twentieth-century America. She holds a doctorate in Musicology from Stanford University, a Master’s degree in Piano Performance from New York University, and a Bachelor’s degree in Comparative Literature and Music from Princeton University.