Eva and the Angel of Death : a Holocaust remembrance opera : the compositional staging of ritual as memory

As the world grows removed in time from the Holocaust, it becomes increasingly important to preserve and share the stories of those who survived its horrors. The contemporary Holocaust remembrance opera Eva and the Angel of Death presents the powerful story of Holocaust survivor Eva Mozes Kor, who, along with her twin sister Miriam, was subjected to sadistic medical experiments by Dr. Josef Mengele in Auschwitz. At the fifty-year anniversary of her liberation from the camp, Kor returned to Auschwitz and, to the surprise of many, announced to the world that she personally forgave the Nazis for what had been done to her. In the context of Holocaust remembrance, an opera like Eva and the Angel of Death contributes a unique ensemble of benefits, constituting an immersive memorial ritual that binds audiences together in a communal and aesthetic act of Holocaust remembrance. Eva Mozes Kor’s story is then summarized and its public reception explored, including the controversy surrounding her decision to forgive. Then, the Eva opera is analyzed in music-theoretic detail at a variety of levels—including a quasi-Schenkerian tonal plan and in-depth analyses of two of the opera’s pivotal arias. Of special note is an array of six semiotic strategies employed throughout the opera to establish meaningful relationships in musical material across wide temporal spans and to encode in music nuanced psychological experiences of trauma and memory. The selected strategies covered include leitmotif, associative textural fields, textural stratification and collage, intertextuality, musical topics, and virtual agency, which connect this modern opera to time-honored techniques of musical semiotics. Logistical plans for the opera’s premiere performances, surrounding programming, and organizational partnerships are presented— though the original performance schedule of an April 18-19 premiere was disrupted by the global outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic. Finally, the investigation concludes with a philosophical reflection on the theme of forgiveness as espoused by Eva Mozes Kor, suggesting that forgiveness may constitute a productive orientation for future Holocaust remembrance efforts as the historical events transition into cultural memory. As Eva did decades after her trauma, the next generation must discern a path forward to carry their memorial task into the future.