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In this intimate opera, Cohen and Brevoort tell the true story of a group of Dutch Jews who are deported to Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in the last year of World War II. Surrounded by horrors of the Holocaust, Jaap and Manja Polak’s already fragile marriage dissolves as he turns his attentions to Ina Soep. The love that Jaap and Ina share helps sustain them through the daily challenges of concentration camp life as they secretly pass love letters to each other. As librettist Deborah Brevoort so beautifully states, “It was a simple story, to be sure – of ordinary breakfasts, and butter for bread – but it nevertheless held great power and ultimately enabled them to survive. When everything is taken away, only the essential remains.”
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