Almost two years after a hearth pressured the Maine Jewish Museum to shut, restore and rebuild, the Portland museum is aiming to construct new connections to the group and new audiences.
And this week, the museum’s employees and board are hoping to do this via music.
The Maine premiere of Russian composer Grigory Frid’s opera “The Diary of Anne Frank” will probably be held on the Maine Jewish Museum, with performances Thursday and Saturday. It’s a part of the museum’s effort to extend collaboration with different Maine cultural teams and entice a wider viewers to the museum past members of the Jewish group.
It’s additionally the primary main occasion to happen on the museum, which is housed within the Etz Chaim Synagogue on Congress Road within the metropolis’s East Finish, underneath new govt director Daybreak LaRochelle, the museum’s first full-time govt director in about two years. It’s additionally the primary manufacturing placed on by Opera within the Pines, a Maine-based various opera firm.
Daybreak LaRochelle, govt director of the Maine Jewish Museum, began her job in April. Ben McCanna/Employees Photographer
“When cultural organizations collaborate as a substitute of compete, they’ll have an outsized influence. So we’d positively love to do extra of this,” stated LaRochelle, who started her job in April. “Internet hosting Opera within the Pines’ inaugural manufacturing dovetails superbly with what we’d wish to be doing.”
The opera, written in 1968, tells the story of Anne Frank, the Jewish teen who, together with her household, hid from Nazis in a hid condominium in Amsterdam throughout World Struggle II. They have been captured some two years later, and Anne died within the Bergen-Belsen focus camp in 1945, on the age of 16. The diary she saved throughout her household’s years in hiding was revealed as e-book and have become the premise for a movie and this opera.
Soprano Rachel Policar will sing the opera “The Diary of Anne Frank” on the Maine Jewish Museum in Portland. Picture courtesy of Rachel Policar
The one-person opera will probably be carried out within the synagogue’s most important worship house by New York-based soprano Rachel Policar, accompanied by Maine pianist Tina Davis. The 19 scenes that Policar will sing as Frank are every from a chapter in Frank’s diary, starting with when she will get the diary for her birthday.
Although the story is finally tragic, Policar stated that Frank had moments of optimism in her writing, and that’s mirrored within the songs, that are sung in English. The efficiency is about 90 minutes with out intermission.
“We neglect she was a 15-year-old woman, and he or she was capable of finding hope and optimism regardless of horrific circumstances,” stated Policar, who’s Jewish. “She says (in a single music) that if she survives, she’ll give herself over to serving the world. She nonetheless believes, in any case she’s been via, that the world is nice.”
The occasion will start with a chat on Frank’s life and diary by Abraham Peck, founding director of the Holocaust, Genocide and Human Rights Research program on the College of Maine at Augusta.
The opera’s Maine debut happened as a result of Opera within the Pines was in search of a reasonably small present for its first manufacturing, one thing that may very well be achieved comparatively safely in a small house and with a small solid, stated Lauren Yokabaskas, one of many Opera within the Pines founders.
The corporate was fashioned final 12 months by Yokabaskas and two different Maine-raised singers – Aaren Rivard and Sable Strout – who had labored across the nation however discovered themselves again in Maine after the pandemic started.
“Every little thing shut down, and we have been all challenged to seek out some technique to pursue music,” stated Yokabaskas, who grew up in Cape Elizabeth.
Due to the opera’s story, Yokabaskas stated, Opera within the Pines approached the Maine Jewish Museum about collaborating. She stated the synagogue’s acoustics, aided by a curved ceiling, have been interesting as effectively.
“What extra excellent place to host an opera about Anne Frank, a Jewish lady whose voice modified the world, than a museum celebrating Jewish immigrants,” stated LaRochelle.
The Maine Jewish Museum at 267 Congress St., Portland is housed within the Etz Chaim Synagogue constructing. Ben McCanna/Employees Photographer
The Maine Jewish Museum was based in 2006 with the objective of celebrating and honoring Maine’s Jewish immigrants. But it surely was additionally began as a manner to assist revitalize the Etz Chaim Synagogue, which on the time had a dwindling congregation and a constructing that was effectively over 130 years previous and in dire want of restore.
A separate basis created for the museum may settle for donations from teams restricted from making non secular donations, stated Rabbi Gary Berenson, who was the museum’s first govt director. As a result of the museum was leasing house from the synagogue, its basis then may use its cash to make repairs, Berenson stated.
“We solely had 20 to 25 households on the time, and we simply couldn’t fund the repairs via the synagogue alone,” stated Berenson. “Creating the museum allowed us to focus consideration on the immigration of Jews to Maine and Portland, how they made a dwelling, how they worshiped and assimilated.”
Through the years, the museum expanded to incorporate rotating artwork reveals by Jewish-connected artists, in a big house off the hallway of the synagogue. A current exhibit featured e-book artwork (works that embrace the structural properties of a e-book) about ladies from the Bible. Different reveals, just like the Maine Jewish Corridor of Fame, images and different historic texts are displayed all through the synagogue constructing, together with within the higher balcony space. The museum is open midday to 4 p.m. Sunday via Friday and is free to the general public, however donations are welcome.
A fireplace broke out on the synagogue and museum on Could 20, 2020, simply as crews have been ending some brickwork as half the decade-long restoration of the constructing. A brand new air-conditioning unit had been put in the day earlier than. The flames of the hearth, which was attributed to defective wiring behind the Torah ark on the second-floor sanctuary, brought about minimal harm, however water harm was in depth.
When the synagogue constructing, together with the museum, reopened in February of 2021, Berenson estimated that it had sustained between $1.25 million and $1.5 million in harm. Insurance coverage and a fire-restoration fundraising marketing campaign will cowl almost all the prices, he stated.
Jessyca M. Broekman’s collection “Followers of Acquiescence” within the exhibit gallery on the Maine Jewish Museum. Ben McCanna/Employees Photographer
Now that the constructing has been restored, Berenson stated board members wish to discover methods to carry extra folks into it. The museum has been internet hosting concert events by the DaPonte String Quartet and another classical teams, however the hope is that performances, like this upcoming opera, will occur extra frequently.
“Partnerships with programmers in the neighborhood are one of the simplest ways to develop a sustainable program for the museum,” stated Katie Getchell, vp of the museum’s board and chair of the programming committee.
One other occasion that board members and employees hope broaden consciousness of the museum is a touring mission referred to as Violins of Hope. Live shows are organized utilizing devices from a set of violins, violas and cellos that belonged to Jews earlier than or in the course of the Holocaust and now belong to violin makers Amnon and Avshalom Weinstein, who work in Israel and Turkey. The violins will probably be displayed on the museum and performed by native musicians in a live performance within the fall. Particulars and the placement of performances are nonetheless being labored out, Getchell stated.
To hold out the museum’s imaginative and prescient of expanded programming and collaborations, board members determined they wanted a full-time govt director. The final full-time director, Gary A. Barron, was employed in 2018 and served about two years earlier than leaving, after which the museum was closed for almost a 12 months. Late final 12 months, after a search, the board introduced it employed LaRochelle.
LaRochelle, 53, grew up within the suburbs of New York Metropolis and graduated from Harvard Legislation College. She ran her personal restaurant, taught English and was most just lately program supervisor on the Heart for Ladies & Enterprise, which has areas throughout New England.
LaRochelle stated she is worked up by the museum’s potential and hopes it will probably change into “a longtime pillar of the Maine group.”
“I believe it will probably change into a spot that’s not solely celebrating and honoring the Maine Jewish immigrant expertise, however trying on the bigger social justice image and underserved communities,” stated LaRochelle. “We are able to try this by constructing partnership and dealing on packages that foster understanding.”
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