Grigori Frid: The Diary of Anne Frank - Chamber opera in 2 acts

About the piece:

Grigori Frid's first opera "The Diary of Anne Frank" was written in 1969. As a Russian Jew, he himself experienced reprisals and persecution in the Soviet Union. For Grigori Frid, Anne Frank's story is the ideal opera material. He breaks up the intimate daybook atmosphere by having only one person appear. The expressive music underlines the young woman's emotional life, jumping between new worlds of sound, between lyrical and rhythmic passages - and thus reveals the character's inner turmoil and despair.
It is a monodrama for soprano and instruments (in our production, a mixed piano quartet in a new performance version by the musical director). Frid thus created his most successful work, which has lost none of its impact to this day and is performed in many places in Germany.
Opera Factory Freiburg is now performing this opera for the first time in Freiburg.
The story of the fate of 13-year-old Anne Frank, who hid with her family in a Secret Annex in Amsterdam from July 1942 until her arrest by the Gestapo in August 1944, unfolds in brief scenes ("Birthday", "School", "Conversation with her father", "Summons to the Gestapo", "The hiding place" or "Raid"). Anne's diary entries from this time show the psychological pressure that weighed on the child and yet was unable to break her moral strength and indomitable will to live.
Anne's profound thoughts, her naïve joy at a gift or a patch of blue sky, but also her naked fear and the will to remain brave, her budding love for Peter, her sense of comedy, her hope for freedom and more humanity - all this is also expressed in the music in an oppressive way. The libretto, taken almost verbatim from the original, is integrated into a musical-lyrical narrative whose emotional content takes into account both the tragedy of the events and the poetic expressiveness of the girl. Particular attention is paid to the characters who only appear in Anne's monologues, but not in person: her father, her mother, her sister Margot and friends. This results in a special complexity that expands the scope of the monodrama.
Our theater pedagogue Friederike Neff will develop a teaching unit for middle and high school students for this production. The Opera Factory is delighted to have the Droste Hülshoff secondary school in Freiburg as host and project partner.

Thoughts on cultural participation:

Friederike Neff, theater pedagogue and music teacher at Droste Hülshoff secondary school, will design teaching materials for the subjects of music, art, literature and theater, German and history on Gregori Frid's opera. The focus will be on Anne Frank's biography, the persecution of the Jews and the Holocaust, and how these themes are reflected in Frid's opera. The material will be used to prepare pupils for the production and enable them to participate.
Friederike Neff will select a sponsor class for this project, which will accompany the Opera Factory Freiburg production as closely as possible. This class will be significantly involved in the production of the program booklet.
Furthermore, an internal school exhibition on the subject of Anne Frank is to be created. This will focus on the artistic approach. A documentary about the OFF production by the Film-AG is planned.

Copyright: Anne Frank Fund