Tevye's Daughters
Available for Production
INSTRUMENTATION
Chamber Orchestra of 10 Musicians:
Clarinet/Bass Clarinet (2)
Percussion
Violin
Viola
Cello (3)
Double Bass
Piano
CHORUS
None
ROLES
7 SINGERS
Shprintse, 15/Rose, 22 (Soprano)
Tseytl, 80/young Tseytl, 23 (Soprano)
Khave, 75/young Khave, 18 (Mezzo-soprano)
Beylke, 70/young Beylke, 13 (Mezzo-soprano)
Golde, 40s (Soprano)
Tevye, 40s (Baritone)
Arontshik, early 20s (Tenor)
DURATION
95’, Two Acts
““Gorgeously heartbreaking… Tevye’s Daughters suggests that art, and true words of prayer, can repair even what the law has broken.””
Inspired by the darker, grittier stories by Sholem Aleichem not included in Fiddler on the Roof, Tevye’s Daughters centers on the tale of the beloved milkman’s younger daughter Shprintse, who falls in love with a young man above her station. Like so many women of her generation, Shprintse has no choice but to navigate her crisis with silence. Galvanized by the literature of little-known female Yiddish writers, as well as tkhines - Yiddish prayers designated expressly for women - Tevye’s Daughters rewrites that silence, giving voice to a generation of women whose stories have frequently been suppressed, omitted, even erased. The opera moves between a shtetl in Ukraine in 1907 and a summer cabin in the Catskills in 1964 as Tseytl, Khave, and Beylke, now old women, haunted by a vestigial memory submerged for more than half a century, can no longer look away from the past. The arrival of Rose, a granddaughter grappling with her own sexual identity, incites the sisters not only to remember Shprintse’s traumatic story, but to come to terms with their shared tumultuous present.
Media
Perusal Materials Available Upon Request
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