The Child Dreams (opera)

The Child Dreams (Hebrew: הילד חולם) is a 2010 opera by Gil Shohat, based on the play of the same name by Hanoch Levin.

[3] Shohat and Nitzan adapted the Hebrew-language libretto from Levin's text, making only slight cuts.

[6] Munitz hired designer Gottfried Helnwein for the production after seeing his work, which features images of hurt children, in Los Angeles.

[1] The opera's premiere coincided with an art exhibition by Helnwein originally created to commemorate Kristallnacht and titled Selektion, which depicted children lined up as though in a concentration camp.

[1][5] While a father and mother watch over their sleeping child, people fleeing war and persecution fill their house.

[1][3][6] The opera is scored for a reduced orchestra and piano:[2][6] piccolo, flute, 2 oboes, clarinet, bass clarinet, bassoon, contrabassoon, 2 horns, 2 trumpets, trombone, piano, celesta, harp, percussions(timpani, vibraphone, xylophone, glockenspiel, tubular bells, triangle, bass drum, ratchet, small side drum, tambourine, tam-tam, wood blocks, cymbal), and strings (particularly the high ranges of some of these instruments and of the soprano voice).

The orchestral music is late-Romantic in style, rejecting avant-garde techniques and influenced by composers like Wagner, Strauss,[2] Ravel,[1] and early Stravinsky.

[6] The vocal music generally resembles recitative or Sprechgesang,[11] though the mother's and child's parts are sometimes more expressive.