Update Title: FD675BA9-FF07-4E46-97BA-59B9CD298B38

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Librettist Bess Welden describes A LITTLE MIRACLE as -an operatic monodrama for mezzo-soprano and chamber orchestra.+ Ms. Welden, born 30 years ago in Youngstown, Ohio, and now a resident of Brooklyn, is an actor, lecturer, and drama instructor (at Vassar College since 1997), as well as an author and, by her own description, Jewish storyteller. She writes:

-I am very close friends with David Stock+s daughter, Rachel, and have known the family for almost fifteen years. When David was in New York City two years ago, to welcome his first grandchild, he asked during the course of a conversation if I would be interested in working on a piece he wanted to write about the Holocaust. After some research and reading, I pitched a few ideas for an original text and we decided on one. He went back to Seattle, and we worked cross-country. The text was inspired by actual stories of Holocaust survivors, as well as by fiction and poetry about the period.+

The composer amplifies:

-A LITTLE MIRACLE owes its genesis to two extraordinary young women: Vivica Genaux, mezzo-soprano, and Bess Welden. I had the privilege of working with Vivica when she was a student at Duquesne University [in Pittsburgh], and resolved to write something for her. I began searching for a text . . . something dramatic, not just a song cycle. Along the way, Bess and I began to discuss working together on this project. I told her what kind of work I wanted to write, and within a few days she had devised the general story plan. Her writing was so inspiring that the music seemed to compose itself, always with the sound of Vivica+s voice in my inner ear.

-The score was written in Seattle, where at the time I was the Symphony+s composer-in-residence, and completed in June 1997. It was commissioned with a grant from the Mary Flagler Cary Trust and is dedicated to those who perished . . . and those who survived. Duration is circa 28 minutes, with scoring for flute and alto flute (both doubling piccolo), oboe, two each of bassoons, horns, and trumpets, percussion, harp, piano, and strings.

-The mezzo-soprano sings all three roles: the narrator, her mother, and, eventually, her daughter.+

-Roger Dettmer (appeared in program from world premiere, 3/99)

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