For a Look
or a Touch: A Young Gay Couple’s Plight in WWII Berlin
Review by
Elena Goukassian
Posted March 20,
2008
Composer Jake Heggie
Berlin in the late 1930s. The streets are filled with young people.
They laugh, they drink, they shout, they dance, they stay out
until dawn. Among them, Manfred and Gad, teenage boys, who, in
the midst of all of this liveliness, fall in love. Then the war
breaks out. One day, Gad goes to Manfred’s house, but he is
gone, his family arrested and taken away like so many other
Jewish families.
Based on the true story of Manfred Lewin and Gad Beck, For a
Look or a Touch was written by composer Jake Heggie just
last year for Seattle’s own
Music of
Remembrance, an organization dedicated to remembering the
Holocaust through the art of music. The song cycle premiered
last March at Benaroya Hall, and it turned out to be a great
success. This past Saturday, it was the Seattle Asian Art Museum
that hosted the performance.
For a Look or a Touch is primarily a musical work, but it
also involves some acting. It is almost like a short play, in
which young Manfred, who had died in a concentration camp, comes
back as a ghost to remind a foreboding Gad, now an old man, of
their past together. Manfred does all the singing, while Gad
merely narrates his thoughts. At the same
time, a quintet plays in the
background. This combination of one actor and one singer plays
out very well and creates a strange yet complementary atmosphere
on stage.
The
music itself is great. Every piece fits perfectly with the event
and emotion at hand. A Gershwin-like tune (with a jazzy clarinet
solo played enthusiastically by Laura DeLuca) portrays the
carefree prewar years. The horrors of the concentration camp are
exemplified through each of five instruments simultaneously
playing a tragic and almost dissonant melody of its own. The
composition is very well-thought-out and the whole song cycle
sung wonderfully by baritone Morgan Smith, for whom the piece
was originally written.
All
in all, this was an excellent and very moving performance,
ending with Gad and Manfred dancing together one more time after
so many years. I heard the woman in front of me start to sob.
Another audience member, Florence Rose, said that this is the
second time she has seen the song cycle, and she is still moved
to tears. As everyone was heading toward the exit, I asked
Clifford Burkey, a friend of the cellist, what he thought of
For a Look or a Touch. “What a great creative experience for
everyone on stage,” he remarked with a sad smile.
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