A few months ago, the idea of writing an Esperanto-language opera about the language’s inventor came to me. I took it as a challenge, because not only have I never written (or even cared to write) an opera, and I know relatively little about the art form. But the first two operas I ever heard were Don Giovanni and The Magic Flute, so I’m at least familiar with the Mozartian version of the art form. (I’m listening to Wagner’s epic Ring cycle now.)
Now on to the plot. This is indeed based on the life of L.L. Zamenhof, but with some artistic license, as long as the known facts of the story are preserved.. It’s part history, part historical fantasy, part hysterical fantasy. (Most of the libretto will have to be written by someone else, but I’ll try to write a little.)
The opera will be dramatic while occasionally comic, a Bildungsroman of sorts for Zamenhof and for modern civilization. The music itself progresses, through the three acts, from Classical to Romantic to Modern--from Mozart to Wagner to Berg.
Act I: Białystok, Poland, then under Russian rule.
This act is in Russian, Polish and Yiddish (Esperanto had not yet been invented), with brief portions using four liturgical languages. Groups of singers from the Orthodox, Catholic, Jewish and Islamic faiths (the last being the Lipka Tatars) function as a "Greek chorus" throughout the opera.
Zamenhof was born in 1859. The January Uprising took place four years later. He witnesses the divisions between the ethnic and religious groups with which he becomes acquainted. He dreams of a future where there would be no war and no persecution, and all nations and peoples would be free. The idea comes to him that if people spoke a common language, then there would be world peace.
Act II: Warsaw, Moscow, Vienna and elsewhere. In this act, among the other languages, Esperanto is first introduced.
Now in secondary school, Zamenhof, a glossophile like his father, has studied numerous other languages, and also discovered one called Volapük, published in 1880 by a German Catholic priest named Johann Martin Schleyer (the language is briefly featured in the act). By now, Esperanto was already well into development.
His career, however, was to be in medicine, and he continued his medical studies in Russia and in Poland. He would begin his practice in Lithuania in 1885, then as an ophthamologist in Poland and Vienna. But while he healed people, he hoped to heal mankind through his universal language.
He would get married, and with the help of his father-in-law, publishes Международный язык. Предисловие и полный учебник (An International Language: Introduction and Complete Textbook). He also developed a religious humanistic philosophy based on the teachings of the rabbi Hillel the Elder, called Homaranismo, which taught the Golden Rule as the supreme moral principle which unites all religions.
Act III: Warsaw, April 1917. This act is entirely in Esperanto.
Zamenhof is now in the last days of his life. The Russian Revolution had begun the month before, and the First World War raged on. Great changes would sweep the Old and New Worlds.
He has a vision of the past and the future. He is told that a great evil will befall Europe, caused by a "German-speaking Haman" (all three of his children were murdered in the Holocaust). His language endures both success (however limited) and suppression. He sees that there may never be world peace, but it will always a noble effort to try to bring it about.
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