FULL THE PATH TO HEAVEN (Adam Gorb) Manchester 2018 Caroline Taylor, Fiona Finsbury, Lucy Vallis

Information on the Performance

• Work Title: The Path to Heaven  
• Composer: Gorb Adam  
• Libretto: Ben Kaye    Libretto Text, Libretto Index
• Venue & Opera Company: Royal Northern College of Music, Manchester, UK  
• Recorded: June 21, 2018
• Type: Staged Opera Live
• Singers: Caroline Taylor, Fiona Finsbury, Lucy Vallis, Lorna Day, Michael Jones, David Cane, Einar Stefánsson
• Conductor: Mark Heron   
• Orchestra: Musicians from Psappha and RNCM  
• Stage Director: Stefan Janski,  
• Costume Designer:   

Information about the Recording

• Format: DVD
• Quality Video: 4 Audio:4
• Subtitles: nosubs  

• ADDITIONAL INFORMATION ON THIS PERFORMANCE

  The Path to Heaven is a powerful and moving one act opera with music by Adam Gorb and words by Ben Kaye.

  A tale of extremism, expedience and deceit, the work exposes the disintegration of the loves, lives and hopes of a family struggling to survive during the Holocaust. Sara, Hanna, Dieter, Magda and Hans return home from a party to find that having ‘danced too long in the moonlight’, evil stalks them from the darkness. The discovery that their adoptive parents have disappeared triggers a descent into a nightmare from which none will escape unchanged. A meticulously-researched series of individual real stories has been woven into a thrilling new opera for the 21st Century.

  Ben Kaye has written of The Path To Heaven:

  The story is about Hatred, Love and Bread.

  A group of friends and lovers in Berlin find their carefree lives suddenly turned into a waking nightmare when they come to the attention of the Nazi authorities. Returning home from her eighteenth birthday party, Sara finds the Uncle and Aunt who raised her arrested and abducted, her friends under suspicion and her entire family branded with a Jewish heritage of the parents that she never knew.

  Abandoned by her lover Dieter, within hours, Sara, her sister Hanna, Hanna’s baby Inge and their cousin Magda are rounded up and packed into cattle trucks, heading ever East for slaughter. Following a brief respite to experience the irony of Nazi Propaganda at Terezin, the group arrive at their “ultimate destination” to undergo the first of many “Selections” by the terrible Doctor “Uncle Rudi”, where the babies, the children, the old, the infirm or frail of mind are routinely diverted straight to the gas chambers.

  As the piles of spectacles, hair and shoes grow ever higher, here they meet “The Cobbler”, a Rabbi who has lost his faith and has been driven mad by the Nazi’s requirement that he survives to service their Jackboots, a sadistic Kapo (Camp Enforcer) and Dieter… Having sought to protect himself whilst Sara’s lover by signing up as a Wehrmacht Soldier, Dieter finds himself stationed as a Camp Guard.

  Having seen The Final Solution first hand, he is now within a second’s decision of suicide. Seeing Sara brings the salvation of his mind within grasp, but the revulsion towards his indoctrination and his one true desire to save her can only end one way. “The die has been set, and the machinations of mere men can do nothing to alter the fickle ways of Fate.”

  My nightmare would be to live in a world where not only was The Holocaust denied as historical fact, but also where Hate Groups thrive unhindered to persecute minority groups to satisfy their lust for meaningless violence and political gain. Please… will someone wake me from my nightmare?

  Musically there were two great challenges: to write a dramatic stage work that, despite the horrific context there would be a hopeful message at the end of The Path to Heaven, which would chime in with my view borne out by my meetings with survivors that the Holocaust was a failure, and Jewish society and culture lives on triumphantly. The other goal was to write a work where fifteen woodwind, brass and percussion instruments could provide support, colour and vibrancy to complement the seven singers. This particular combination of instruments is capable of extreme force and great tenderness, plus humour and satire where appropriate. Most importantly where words need to be heard, they are, and the dramatic structure is clear to the listener.

  The production of The Path to Heaven was semi-staged, and the premiere took place at the Howard Assembly Room in Leeds on June 19th2018, with a second performance at the Royal Northern College of Music on June 21st. The director was Stefan Janski and the conductor Mark Heron.

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