Libretto
Translated and Transliterated by
Dr. Diana Matut
Additional Texts by Michael Wex
This unique work falls directly in the period of the 1920s when operas were expanding beyond the hegemony of Italian and German language libretti.
Beside the operas in Czech (Janáček) English (Vaugh Williams), French (Ravel), Hungarian (Kodály) and Polish (Szymanowski), Bas-Sheve remains the only one in Yiddish. Its musical language is mainly late Romantic, featuring chromatic modulations, unique cadential devices, rapid changes of mood and color and specific Yiddish musical gestures.
It falls easily in the category of late Romantic exotic works, such as
Samson and Delilah and Sheherezade.
