“gorgeously heartbreaking… Tevye’s Daughters suggests that art, and true words of prayer, can repair even what the law has broken.”
— Rokhl Kafrissen, Tablet Magazine
In Fiddler on the Roof, Tevye’s daughters marry for love. But what happens after they immigrate to America? Who do these emissaries of the old world become as their lives unfold in the new?
Tevye’s Daughters is inspired by a tale in Sholem Aleichem’s Tevye the Milkman collection not included in Fiddler, in which Tevye’s daughter Shprintse falls head over heels with a suitor above her station, troubling the status quo, leading to a devastating end. The opera moves between a shtetl in 1907 Ukraine and a Catskills summer cabin in 1964 as Tevye’s surviving daughters, now old women haunted by a vestigial memory submerged for more than half a century, can no longer look away from the past. An unexpected visit from Tseytl’s granddaughter Rose catalyzes the sisters to remember Shprintse’s traumatic story as a means of grappling with the present amidst a time of roiling change.
In Sholem Aleichem’s telling, Shprintse, like so many daughters of her generation, had no choice but to navigate her crisis with silence. This highly theatrical, tragicomic celebration of love and family rewrites that silence, giving voice to a generation of women whose stories have been suppressed. Fleischmann’s libretto is galvanized by the literature of little-known female Yiddish writers, as well as tkhines (Yiddish prayers expressly for women). Weiser’s spare yet heartrending music creates evocative sound worlds tied to place, spanning haunting moments of prayer and the idiosyncrasies of Tevye’s folk sayings, and embodying the ripple effect of memory.
Seeking premiere, co-producers
Libretto, piano-vocal score, video excerpts and complete documentation of piano/vocal workshop available upon request
Duration: 2 acts, 95 minutes—1 intermission
Vocalists: 7 singers—light lyric soprano, coloratura soprano, high lyric mezzo, lyric mezzo, full lyric soprano, baritone, tenor
Orchestra: 11 players—2 clarinets, violin, viola, 3 cellos, bass, piano, 2 percussionists
contact: Alex Weiser AlexWeiserMusic@gmail.com / Stephanie Fleischmann stephanie.a.fleischmann@gmail.com / Lawrence Edelson lawrenceedelson@altnyc.org
