a new opera
music by Alex Weiser
libretto Stephanie Fleischmann

commissioned by American Lyric Theater

In Fiddler on the Roof…

Tevye’s daughters marry for love. But what happens after they immigrate to America? Who do they become as grown women, straddling both the old world and the new, carrying with them the baggage engendered by the upheavals of the 20th century? And what of the sisters you didn’t meet in Fiddler?            

Inspired by Sholem Aleichem’s “Shprintse,” one of the darker stories in the beloved writer’s Tevye the Milkman collection, the opera centers on a tale not included in the musical, in which Tevye’s younger daughter Shprintse falls in love with a young man above her station, troubling the status quo. Like so many women of her generation, Shprintse, in Sholem Aleichem’s telling, has no choice but to navigate her crisis with silence.

Tevye’s Daughters rewrites that silence, giving voice to a generation of women whose stories have been suppressed. The opera conjures a highly theatrical reimagining of a cultural archetype we think we know, from the perspective of the daughters themselves—instead of filtered through Tevye’s famously discursive narrative lens. Galvanized by the literature of little-known female Yiddish writers, as well as tkhines (Yiddish prayers expressly for women), this tragi-comic celebration of love and family moves between a shtetl in 1907 Ukraine and a Catskills summer cabin in 1964 as Tevye’s surviving daughters, 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 in the throes of coming out and coming of age amidst a time of roiling change—incites the sisters not only to re-member Shprintse’s traumatic story, but to come to terms with their shared tumultuous present.

Building from a rich, darkly hued music that depicts the pond haunting both 1907 and 1964, the sound world of the opera embodies the ripple effect of memory, dark, undulating chords fall progressively lower, unmooring tonality. Shimmering high notes glide chromatically through shifting harmonies. Moments of prayer as well as Tevye’s folk sayings and scripture subtly evoke Weiser’s singular take on Jewish folk music, which is unique, spare and heartrending.

Duration: 2 acts, 95 minutes
Vocalists: 7 singers—light lyric soprano, coloratura soprano, high lyric mezzo, lyric mezzo, full lyric soprano, baritone, tenor
Orchestra: 10 instruments—2 clarinets, violin, viola, 3 cellos, bass, piano, percussion

Development Timeline
November 2022: Libretto workshop/reading c/o American Lyric Theater; dramaturg: Cori Ellison
November 2023: Piano-vocal workshop concert performance c/o American Lyric Theater; conductor: Kelly Kuo
November 2024: Orchestral workshop concert performance c/o American Lyric Theater

Seeking premiere, co-producers.
Libretto, piano-vocal score, video excerpts and complete documentation of piano/vocal workshop available upon request.