Spring Opera: Enemies, A Love Story

Enemies is an opera in two acts by composer Ben Moore and librettist Nahma Sandrow, based on the novel by Isaac Bashevis Singer. The work premiered at Palm Beach Opera in 2015 to critical acclaim and standing ovations. Fred Plotkin (WQXR) called it “an important new work that will find its place among those works that audiences will be moved by...”; the Wall Street Journal praised its "soaring Puccinian lines, folk tunes and klezmer melodies"; the Financial Times noted the “taut libretto” and “arresting combination of breeziness on the surface and darkness underneath”; and Edge Media Network called 'Tamara's Aria' "a piece that is likely to become a permanent part in the dramatic soprano/mezzo-soprano repertory alongside 'To This We've Come' from Menotti's 'The Consul' and 'La Mamma Morta' from Giordano's 'Andrea Chenier'.” In November 2018 Kentucky Opera presented a newly-revised version of the work. Both comic and tragic, Enemies tells the story of Holocaust survivor Herman Broder. He lives in post-war New York with a new wife and a secret mistress, but when the wife he thought dead returns, love and guilt create unbearable–but farcical–complications.

Ben Moore, composer
Nahma Sandrow, librettist

Susan Shiplett Ashbaker, music director and conductor
Rebecca Miller Kratzer, stage director

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