About
Commissioned by Opera Cabal in 2008, usw is a one-act, multi-media chamber opera based on the life, social conditions and writing of the Polish/German socialist Rosa Luxemburg. The score & libretto are by Lewis Nielson (former Chair of Composition, Oberlin Conservatory), and assembled from fragmentary passages in multiple languages of works by Luxemburg; prominent socialists in the 19th century (including Marx, Engels and Jaures); and poets from around the turn of the 20th century (including Trakl, Freiligrath and F. Scott Fitzgerald). Emmy Award-winning soap opera director, Habib Azar, conductor Nicholas DeMaison, and video artist Alexander Overington weave together a stage action that is both complimentary to and at other times alienated from Nielson's austerely beautiful score. Featuring Majel Connery as the voiceless Rosa.