While there is nothing particularly Jewish about the Oliver Sacks story “The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat,” a local operatic adaptation has enough Jewish hands in it to be “Fiddler on the Roof.”
The College of Marin production of the best-selling novel was written by a Jew about the non-Jewish life of a Nazi war refugee. And the local production’s operatic lead as well as the composer of the opening number about a religious cult are Jewish.
Producers and actors say there’s no conspiracy at play to be especially Jewish — or not. It just worked out that way.
The opera, which opens tomorrow along with “Minutes to the Last Trumpet,” is a true story is about an elderly man, Mr. P, who had a long career as a classic singer but suffers from a rare visual disorder, which makes it difficult for him to function alone in public. Instead, he retreats into a world of his own. With the help of his wife, he touches others through his music.
Louis Weiner of Larkspur, who plays Mr. P, is a veteran singer. He made his operatic debut as a conservatory student in New Jersey. There, he met his wife, Mitzie Weiner, who sings with the San Francisco Opera Chorus. Along with the conservatory, the couple performed with the New York Philharmonic Orchestra under Leonard Bernstein and traveled to Italy together to sing opera.
Weiner, 44, has also performed with the choruses at San Francisco’s Congregation Emanu-El and Congregation Rodef Sholom in San Rafael, where the baritone exercised his larynx mostly as an administrator.
Most recently, he was named executive director of the Marin Symphony.
This will be his fourth season in the College of Marin’s summer opera series, which features one-act pieces sung in English.
“I perform and help with promotions,” Weiner said. “It’s kind of a family effort,” so to speak.
Half-joking, Weiner pointed out that the woman who plays Mr. P’s wife, Gail MacGowan, works at S.F.-based Jewish Family and Children’s Services.
Jules Langert of Berkeley, a friend of the production’s musical director Paul Smith, wrote the opening opera “Minutes to the Last Trumpet” specifically for the College of Marin series.
The original short story first appeared in a magazine. Written by another friend of Langert’s, the story is about a religious cult on the night members await the apocalypse.
The tale captured Langert’s musical imagination. He had already written a couple of community operas and decided the cult story would work nicely with a chorus.
While his 15-minute opera conjures images of a human wrestling match with the spiritual realm, Langert says his own religious connection remains in his childhood synagogue.
Nevertheless, the composer says a sense of “prayerful experience” and particularly “the gestural feeling of psalms” informs some of his music, which he describes as dissonant and atonal.
“I’ve always liked the idea of music and drama combined,” he said.
“[The writing] takes a lot of perseverance, lots of false starts…and some vague notion of pacing and timing. You feel like you are hunting for a little discovery.”