Word: dybbuk
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1950-1959
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Jewish lore, a "dybbuk" is the soul of someone who dies without fulfilling his destiny; to earn eternal rest, the soul must return to earth and find fulfillment in the body of somebody else. The Dybbuk of Russian Playwright S. Ansky has been an international stage classic for 30 years. A lot of people were sure it would make first-class opera, but all attempts seemed to end in failure...
...Oregon-born brothers, Alex and David Tamkin, finished an operatic version in 1933. Met Conductor Artur Bodanzky saw it and liked it, but died before he could get it produced. Over the years, The Dybbuk inhabited several other composers, among them Hollywood's Dimitri Tiomkin. Two years ago, excerpts from the Tamkin work were presented in Portland, Ore. Last season the New York City Opera scheduled a production, but postponed it "for economy." Last week the Tamkin Dybbuk finally found fulfillment, and Manhattan's City Center Theater was packed for the world premi...
...impoverished young Talmudic scholar named Channon wants to marry Leah, the daughter of a practical bourgeois type who thinks his daughter can do a lot better. Torn with love and bitterness, Channon studies mystic books, tampers with the supernatural, and is struck dead. But he returns as a dybbuk, to inhabit the body of Leah herself, just as she is presented with her wedding veil. In the final act, a rabbi exorcises the dybbuk, but Leah collapses, to join her beloved Channon in death...