OPERA
THURSDAY - SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 20 - 23, 2018
7:30 PM THURSDAY & FRIDAY
8:00 PM SATURDAY
3:00 PM SUNDAY

Peak Performances
Alexander Kasser Theater, Montclair State University
22 Normal Avenue, Montclair, New Jersey

$30

You wouldn't expect to see a Klezmer-based opera dealing with Cuban history, but here's the deal:  in the 1930s, a Ukranian Jewish writer whose family had emigrated to Cuba to escape pogroms (he ultimately, of course, ended up living in New York, writing for and editing The Forward) published an epic poem, drawing on his pogrom experiences, about Hatuey, a Taíno chieftain who had led a systematic violent resistance to the Spanish invasion centuries ago -- the first such resistance in this hemisphere -- and ended up being burned at the stake.  This is a highly fictionalized account of the writing of that poem (with a romantic subplot inserted), set to music fusing Cuban and Klezmer by the great avant-Klezmer Frank London.

MAKE A NIGHT OF IT:  Saturday nights, Peak Performances charters a bus to and from the Montclair campus and Port Authority ($10).  So if you're coming from New York on the bus, you'll be spending the rest of your Saturday night around Port Authority.  If you're coming from or sticking around Montclair, how about the Israeli restaurant MishMish beforehand (not trying to be programmatic or anything, just going for what's good)?   Afterward is an easy call:  Pharmacie Liquor Bar.