Presented by the 14 Stret Y, through its LABA program

May 4, 2013

3WEEKS at 14 Street Y, highlights

— yoav gal @ 8:53 pm

May 3, 2013

Audio Recording From LABA, 2012

— yoav gal @ 9:00 am

Tracks

00:00

May 2, 2013

Full Performance movie

— yoav gal @ 8:50 pm

November 9, 2012

Performance photos, by Yoav

— yoav gal @ 12:45 am

If you are not seeing a slideshow, please click HERE.

October 31, 2012

Images from the production – by Eddie

— yoav gal @ 9:05 am

If you are not seeing a slideshow, please click HERE.

September 19, 2012

Singer and Costume Designer Heather Green on the Music and Story of 3WEEKS

— yoav gal @ 12:32 pm

September 17, 2012

Rehearsal Pictures and First Look at the Set

— yoav gal @ 2:37 pm

Check out these shots of our extremely talented cast, composer, director, and musical director at rehearsal, as well as Yoav and set designer Andreea Mincic’s bold scaffolding based set.

September 8, 2012

Tickets for 3WEEKS: The Multimedia Concert Staging at the 14th St. Y

— yoav gal @ 12:52 am

Tickets are now available for the multimedia concert staging of 3WEEKS at the 14th St. Y. Tickets are $25 and are available by clicking your preferred show dates below.

3WEEKS: The Multimedia Concert Staging
At the 14th St. Y
344 East 14th St. between 1st and 2nd Aves.
New York, NY 10003

Click your preferred show times to buy tickets:

Friday, September 28th, 8:00 pm

Saturday, September 29th, 2:00 pm

Saturday, September 29th, 8:30 pm

Sunday, September 30th, 3:00 pm

Box office phone number: (646) 395-4322

September 6, 2012

Our cast is finalized!

— yoav gal @ 7:06 pm

Rabban Yochanan Ben Zakkai: Gregory Purnhagen

Aspasianus: Heather Green

Narrator/daughter of Nakdimon Ben Gurion: Inbal Hever

Yehudia: Karin Hochman

Martha, daughter of Boethus: Abigail Fischer

Pangar, Duke of Arabia: Biraj Barkakaty

Ben Tsitsit Hakeset: Aram Tchobanian

Ben Kalba Savua: Daniel Neer

Abba Sikra Ben Batiach: Gavriel Savit

August 27, 2012

Recording from New York City Opera. VOX 2011. Recorded by WQXR.

— yoav gal @ 10:00 pm

contact 3weekstheopera@gmail.com

3WEEKS, the opera.
by Yoav Gal

Libretto by Ruby Numdar
Music direction by Yegor Shevtsov
Directed by Ronit Muszkatblit

The last days of the Roman siege of Jerusalem, the destruction of the Temple, and the controversial act of Rabban Yochanan Ben Zakkai, who bargained with the Roman power, giving up on the glories and extravagances of old Jerusalem, in return for a humble center of learning (Beit Midrash) in a small coastal town of Yavne.

" truly fresh….serious without being ponderous…. not afraid to play with operatic conventions… unpredictable — sometimes absurd, sometimes sincere — but with a core of real feeling." NY Times

Confined within the walls of a besieged and starving city, a Rabbi conceives of a monumental shift in consciousness and an alternative destiny for his people. Through a tapestry of extraordinary episodes, the hybrid opera, 3WEEKS, re-constructs the events of the siege of Jerusalem, and the controversial act of Rabban Yochanan Ben Zakkai, who bargained with the Roman power, giving up on the glories of Jerusalem in return for a modest center of learning.

Following his critically acclaimed MOSHEH (HERE Arts Center, 2011), 3WEEKS is a new effort from a creator who aims at the revival of the operatic form as a cutting edge 21st century medium.

3WEEKS The story.

In the chronicles of the forcible exile of the Jews from Jerusalem, replete with many subplots, contradicting variations and commentary, the following story is told: The year is 68 AD; Jerusalem is besieged by the Roman legions. Within the city walls, the Zealots have taken control, burned the stores of food and fuel, and are refusing to negotiate with the Romans.

Rabban Yochanan Ben Zakkai, a distinguished sage, despairs of hope for the survival of the capital. He has himself smuggled out of the city, disguised as a corpse in a coffin. Once outside, he goes before Vespasian, the Roman general (later Emperor) in command of the siege. A fateful, yet absurd, conversation ensues. Yochanan exhibits unusual wisdom, divining from trivial signs that the general is destined to be Emperor. This foresight wins him Vespasian's favor, and he is granted a wish. Yochanan fateful reply: "give me Yavneh and its sages," means, in effect: take Jerusalem, but let us retain the "beit midrash" (a house of study) at Yavneh.

Three Weeks is scored for nine singers, eleven musicians and video projections. It was first conceived in 2008, and named after the period in the Jewish calendar leading up to the day of commemoration. I approached award-winning writer and scholar Reuven (Ruby) Namdar to work with me on the text. We decided to construct a libretto entirely of quotes from the source material in their original languages. Ruby collected Talmudic sources and meticulously assembled them, leaving intact re-iterations, contradiction and absurdities typical of a story that has been passed down though generations. The text spoken by the Romans was translated "back" to Latin from Hebrew and Aramaic, with the generous help from Judith Hallet and David Ratzan. The musical style of the work is somewhat similar to that of my earlier opera MOSHEH - somtimes described as "Baroque Minimalism". In contrast to MOSHEH, However, 3WEEKS is a faster paced work, which relies on abrupt juxtapositions of contrasting textures to create the sense of disorientation brought about by siege and war. This treatment retains the complex and layered "memory" of the events. The rapid succession of scenes, and superimposition of live and recorded sound and image, create a dense texture of information, which is contrasted with sections of vast emptiness and sadness.

A large group of characters, including sages, zealots, Roman officers and wealthy Jerusalemites, are enacted by a group of nine performers, doubling the various parts in live as well as pre-recorded performances. The gender of the character is fluid, with females performing male parts and vise versa. The vocal characterization plays on popular perception of 'opera' as over-stylized, endowing the Romans (Italian invaders) with a Baroque extravagance, and the Jews with a more familiar straight tone.

An intensely tragic cloud hovers over this narrative in the Talmud. Yochanan's meeting with the General forms a great hinge in Jewish history, and his "bargain" is debated and re-evaluated by later sages in Talmudic texts. Ben Zakkai gambled that a people, his people, could survive without a homeland. Land possession and the projection of power would be replaced by a focus on study, prayer, and law. Tradition and community would uphold the people regardless the geographical and political realities they found themselves in. But survival in exile proved very precarious, and in the 20th century the State of Israel was established on the opposite realization, that survival finally depended on the possession of land and the means of power. Thus the issues framed by Ben Zakai's quiet revolution are still acutely relevant today. His act put in motion an unfolding morality play, which still garners disproportionate attention on the world's stage.

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Presented by the 14 Stret Y, through its LABA program

3WEEKS, the opera.by Yoav Gal

3WEEKS The story.

3WEEKS, the opera.
by Yoav Gal