Road to Regina

Marc Blitzstein was born in Philadeplhia, March 2, 1905 into a family that owned a small private bank, whose principal business was the financing of Eastern European immigrants as they came to America. As such, they were sympathetic to all those people striving for a better life and who sacrificed to establish themselves in the new land. A piano prodigy, while still in his teens he appeared as a piano soloist with the Philadelphia orchestra. And he began composing, settings poems by A. E. Housman, Walt Whitman, e e cummings and others, and writing incidental music for small local theatre productions. Ultimately, over the course of his career, he would write a dozen operas and musicals, song cycles, string quartets, symphonic works, film scores, and choral works. He was in one of the first classes at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia, and by his early twenties he found himself in Paris studying with the famous teacher Nadia Boulanger, and soon after in Berlin with Arnold Schoenberg. The late ‘20s and early ‘30s were a time of avant-garde experimentation, and Blitzstein adopted certain ideas from both Boulanger and Schoenberg: almost always a strong lyrical line that Boulanger favored, and although he didn’t care much for Schoenberg’s 12-tone music, he did appreciate the way Schoenberg used the human voice in the full range between speaking and singing, sometimes called Sprechstimme.

Eric A. Gordon has served as Director of The Workmen’s Circle/Arbeter Ring Southern California District since November 1995. A number of new programs, as well as reinvigorated outreach into the community, have helped increase membership and member involvement. Eric is also a scholar and writer. He has his undergraduate degree from Yale University and his doctorate in history from Tulane University. He is the author of Mark the Music: The Life and Work of Marc Blitzstein, a prominent 20th-century American composer, and Ballad of an American: The Autobiography of Earl Robinson, on which he collaborated. He is a member of the National Writers Union (UAW/AFL-CIO), and serves on the Western Region Administrative Committee of the Jewish Labor Committee. He also serves on the Editorial Advisory Board of Jewish Currents magazine. He is a founding member and sings with the Mit Gezang Yiddish Chorus of the Workmen’s Circle, and with Voices of Conscience, the social action chorus of Los Angeles.

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3/11/05: ‘40s Fridays: Road to Regina

Road to Regina explores the Kennedy Center’s production of Marc Blitzen’s operatic drama Regina that chronicles a rich Southern family torn apart by greed.

‘40s Fridays: Road to Regina

Road to Regina explores the Kennedy Center’s production of Marc Blitzen’s operatic drama Regina that chronicles a rich Southern family torn apart by greed.

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Road to Regina

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