FULL Alzheimer’s Stories (Cohen) Toronto 2023 Pax Christi Chorale
Information on the Performance
- Work Title: Alzheimer’s Stories
- Composer: Cohen Robert
- Libretto: Herschel Garfein
- Venue & Opera Company: Holy Blossom Temple, Toronto, Canada
- Recorded: October 29, 2023
- Type: Concert Live
- Singers:
- Conductor: Elaine Choi
- Orchestra:
- Chorus: Pax Christi Chorale
- Stage Director:
- Costume Designer:
Information about the Recording
- Published by: paxchristichorale
- Date Published: 2024
- Format: Streaming
- Quality Video: 3 Audio:3
- Subtitles: nosubs
- Video Recording from: YouTube FULL VIDEO
ADDITIONAL INFORMATION ON THIS PERFORMANCE
PROGRAM LEAFLET
Alzheimer’s Stories is a large work for soloists, chorus and large ensemble. It was commissioned by the Susquehanna Valley Chorale and is based on the libretto by Herschel Garfein, which tells recollections of chorus members and friends with relatives who’ve had the dreaded disease. It was premiered on October 9, 2009 at the Weis Center for the Performing Arts conducted by Dr. William Payn. It was recorded for broadcast by PBS television station WVIA and subsequently performed throughout the U.S and Europe. It is published by Edition Peters.
Program Notes
In 2008, a member of the Susquehanna Valley Chorale who asked to remain anonymous made a donation to the chorale to help fund the commissioning of a musical work on the subject of Alzheimer’s disease to honor his parents, who had both died of it. In collaboration with 2012 Grammy Award winning opera librettist Herschel Garfein (Elmer Gantry), a blog was set up on the choir’s website www.svcmusic.org to record stories by chorus members and the local community describing experiences with relatives and friends who had Alzheimer’s disease with a selected group of those stories becoming the basis for the work: Alzheimer’s Stories for soloists, chorus and large ensemble.
The work is in three movements the arc of which loosely mimics the progression of the disease:
The Numbers – an objective description of the discovery of the disease by Dr. Alois Alzheimer in 1901 including the number of individuals currently afflicted, future projections and dramatized conversations between Dr. Alzheimer and his first patient, Auguste Dieter. The movement ends with an extended setting of a quote from his patient Ich hab mich verloren, “I have lost myself.”
The Stories – a pastiche of a number of selected stories taken from the choir’s blog. With a mixture of pathos, poignancy and humor, we meet a number of individuals afflicted with the disease, portrayed by the two soloists, as well as the recollections of family members. Two notables: a woman who still thinks she’s on a boat to Panama with her father; and a WWII Navy veteran who repeats the same bawdy story of the war so many times that the chorus can recite it by heart.
For the Caregivers – The most difficult part of writing a work about such a terrible and ultimately hopeless disease was how to end the work with some semblance of hope. The clue came in a recollection by one of the chorus members about a visit to a nursing home where a patient asked them to sing. When asked what, the patient replied: “Sing anything.” First referenced in the second movement, this idea became the centerpiece and focus of the last movement. The core of the brilliantly realized libretto is as follows:
Find those you love in the dark and light. Help them through the days and nights.
Keep faith. They sense what they cannot show. Love and music are the last things to go. Sing anything.
Quoted from Robert S. Cohen