Esther (opera)

Esther is an American opera in 3 acts composed by Hugo Weisgall, with a libretto by Charles Kondek. Esther was premiered by the New York City Opera in October 1993. The opera is about Esther’s struggle as she becomes the queen of Persia, and her heroic triumph over the evil Prime Minister Haman and his plot of exterminating the Jews.

Esther was a Jewish queen of the Persian Empire, the wife of Ahasuerus (also known as Xerxes I). Today, her story is best known through its telling in Jewish Scriptures and the Old Testament of the Christian Bible. As a result of Esther's intervention and influence, Mizrahi Jews lived in the Persian Empire for 2400 years thereafter. Jews established an annual feast, the feast of Purim, in memory of their deliverance. Weisgall is one of few composers to use the character Esther as a subject, including Palestrina, Handel, and Milhaud.

Esther was Weisgall’s 10th and last opera. It was considered one of his most successful works, along with Six Characters in Search of an Author, which confirmed his reputation as a major 20th-century American composer. Despite the background and sources of the subject, Weisgall composed Esther with no discernible attempt to adapt Persian music or style in his opera. The opera remained post-modernist, with strong Second Viennese School influence, although not entirely atonal. Weisgall descended from four generations of cantors, including his father, and as a result, absorbed from an early age the musical traditions of the Jews of central Europe as well as the standard opera and song repertory, which influenced the writing for Esther.

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