“The Eichmann Trial”, a world premiere at the National Opera House in Bucharest
Gil Shohat's “The Eichmann Trial” opera, based on a libretto by the Israeli playwright Motti Lerner, will premiere at the National Opera House in Bucharest, on March 30.
Radio România Internațional, 24.03.2025, 18:00
The opera show is directed by Erwin Simsensohn, the set design is signed by Dragoș Buhagiar, musical direction by Daniel Jinga, with the participation of the Bucharest National Opera Orchestra and Choir. It is part of an extensive cultural project aimed at keeping the memory of the Holocaust alive and at relearning an essential and painful history lesson.
One of its initiators, alongside Tova Ben-Nun Cherbis, founder of the Magna Cum Laude-Reut Foundation and the Laude-Reut Educational Complex, is Israeli theater manager and producer Noam Semel, who spoke to RRI’s Eugen Cojocariu about the history of the opera, about his expectations from the public, and last but not least, about his ties to Romania.
What is like to compose music on an extremely sad and sensitive subject? The composer of the opera, Gil Shohat, has tried an answer, as part of a more extensive interview by Eugen Cojocariu.
The author of “The Eichmann Play”, Motti Lerner tells us the lesson we should learn from the play differs from individual to individual, but every country that wants to remain a democracy has to strengthen its legal system and protect human rights.
A play of the same name, by Motti Lerner, has already been staged at the National Theatre in Bucharest. It tells the story of Nazi lieutenant-colonel Adolf Eichmann, who was the main responsible for the implementation of the Final Solution in Europe and the ensuing extermination of 6 million Jews between 1940 and 1945, during the Holocaust. Eichmann escaped prosecution during the Nuremberg Trials and fled to South America under a false identity. He was spotted by Israeli security services in 1960, brought to Jerusalem and tried in 1961. Adolf Eichmann was sentenced to death by hanging in 1962, for crimes against the Jewish people and crimes against humanity.
