by Mike Telin
Although composer Dawn Sonntag was well-versed in writing art song, vocal chamber music, and works for chorus, there was one thing missing from her catalogue of works for the voice — an opera. “I wanted to compose one but I had not found a libretto that I connected with,” the Associate Professor of Music and Chair of the Music Department at Hiram College said during a telephone conversation.
Then one night during dinner with her mother-in-law, that changed. “I knew she had been born and spent part of her childhood in East Prussia, but I didn’t know why she had left. So I asked her and she told me the whole story. And when I was listening to it I thought, this is it!”
On Saturday, January 27 at 7:30 pm at the Maltz Center for the Performing Arts, Cleveland Opera Theater will present the Cleveland premiere of Dawn Sonntag’s Verlorene Heimat (“Lost Homeland”) as part of the company’s {NOW} Festival. Presented in collaboration with the Cleveland Composers’ Guild, the opera is based on the true story of the East Prussian refugee family of Christa Neuber Kuske (1937 – 2012) and the Jewish-Ukrainian girl they sheltered.