Between 1933 and 1945, Adolf Hitler and his Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels took control of the film, radio, theatre, and press productions in Germany. Included in this were a series of operas made to celebrate the Third Reich.
Now, in an ironic turn of events, American composer Jake Heggie has composed Two Remain: an opera which tells the stories of those persecuted during that time—and it’s being performed in Melbourne this month.
“Two Remain is an opportunity for audiences to focus on difficult moments in history, and really think about them form a perspective that hasn’t normally been utilised,” Stage Director of Two Remain, Cynthia Wohlschlager tells Not Safe For Queers.
“It’s the first opera dealing with the persecution of gay men during the Holocaust. And so having that opportunity to talk about people affected by this terrible moment in history allows audiences to think about it from a myriad of viewpoints,” she says.
An opera in two acts, Two Remain tells the very intimate stories of two people: one of Gad Beck, a gay Jewish man, and one of Krystyna Zywulska, a political prisoner at Auschwitz-Birkenau.
“Act I and Act II are are stories of two separate survivors,” Wohlschlager says. “The first is Krystyna, and at the top of the show, she’s actually in present day in the later years of her life.”
“And Krystyna has been asked by a reporter to detail her time in Auschwitz-Birkenau, but she has a lot of trouble really thinking and reliving the memories. But as she starts having these memories of her time as a political prisoner in the camp, and moments with friends and comrades that she met there, there comes a turning point where she remembers something that she had to do that went against who she was.”
“And then, in Act II, Gad Beck is in his 80s, he’s still in Berlin, and he’s visited by the ghost of his partner from before the war, Manfred, but Gad is very resistant. He, too, doesn’t want to necessarily remember. He’s looking through pictures and photos and articles from the time, but it hurts too much.”
This theme of memories—whether they be harmful or helpful—runs throughout the opera, with the ghosts of these characters’ pasts slowly helping them deal with the trauma that they faced during the 30s and 40s.
Wohlschlager says that, with its heavy subject matter, Two Remain has been a challenge to work on. “But it’s absolutely necessary,” she says. “Frankly, if we don’t tell these stories, history is bound to repeat itself. Like, there are just human elements that run through time any time that power is misused.
“And so it’s important to think about these things so that people don’t continue to make choices that hurt other people.”
Two Remain plays at fortyfivedownstairs from 25 – 28 July. Tickets start at $30.