“When the world splinters after a cataclysmic event, how does a poet, an artist, a dancer or a composer move forward without plunging into hopelessness or wallowing in optimistic platitudes?” writes Janet Silver Ghent in Thursday’s (8/19) Palo Alto Online (CA). “Those are questions Paul Celan, a Holocaust survivor, wrestled with through his poetry and composer Matthew Aucoin raises in ‘The No One’s Rose,’ a music, dance and theater piece based on the poems of Celan (1920-1970) … [who] survived the Shoah, which claimed the lives of his family…. But the ensuing guilt and trauma led him to die by suicide…. Aucoin includes three of Celan’s poems in ‘The No One’s Rose,’ which has its world premiere Aug. 25-29 at Stanford’s Bing Concert Hall, presented by American Modern Opera Company in partnership with Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra and Stanford Live…. The piece evolved [into] ‘a dance and theater piece about how you rebuild after the last year,’ Aucoin said… Dancers, instrumentalists and singers [soprano Julia Bullock, countertenor Anthony Roth Costanzo, tenor Paul Appleby and bass-baritone Davóne Tines] also serve as storytellers…. Violinist Keir GoGwilt … talks about the emotional impact of performing via Zoom to hospitalized COVID patients.”
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