BIRMINGHAM, Ala. — Continuing its annual excursion into edgy but lesser-known repertoire, Opera Birmingham staged Grigory Frid’s visceral and deeply engaging operatic monodrama The Diary of Anne Frank on April 5.
Frid’s libretto was culled directly by the composer from the text the young Jewish girl wrote in the early 1940s as she struggled to survive the Gestapo takeover of Amsterdam. The 21 short scenes, meticulously chosen excerpts from the 50,000-word diary, vividly encapsulate the experiences of a frightened yet precocious 13-to-15-year-old in hiding with seven others.
Performed in the acoustically pristine, 450-seat Dorothy Jemison Theater at the Alabama School of Fine Arts in Birmingham, the hour-long work could not have been better presented. A mostly darkened stage — spotlit with a window frame, Anne’s writing desk, and a trunk — created a minimal yet evocative environment.
Anyone who has toured the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam could relate to the starkness of the stage. At the museum, the steep, narrow staircase and close spaces are striking. In this production, the illusion of claustrophobia created by a single actor crossing to immovable props from scene to scene created a backdrop for Anne’s wide range of emotions, each vividly portrayed by the sole performer, soprano Kathleen Farrar Buccleugh.
Casting an accomplished soprano in the dramatic role of a young teenager might seem implausible, yet Buccleugh bridged that suspension of disbelief with vocal nuance, exaggerated facial expressions of anger, fright, frustration, humor, coming-of-age youthful discovery, and the real probability of her death.
Coupling the dramatic intensity of a seasoned opera singer with the precision of an art-song performer, she engaged listeners on several levels. Her drab gray dress and loosely wrapped blanket fit the ambiance, as did her fluid movement and variety of temperaments.
In the pit, the nine-piece instrumental ensemble was given an intense workout by conductor Lester Seigel, beginning with the score’s clamorous, dissonant opening of brass, strings, keyboard, and percussion and ending with the same material but closing with a mournful sigh.
Frid (1915-2012) was a prolific Russian composer of vocal and instrumental music and film scores. His musical style, at once evoking repetitive martial rhythms, remnants of Soviet socialist realism, and jazzy harmonies, draws from Stravinsky, Shostakovich, and the Viennese serialists. A World War II veteran, Frid vowed not to change a word of Anne Frank’s text. He completed the work in 1969.
Each scene, sung here in English with English supertitles, corresponds to dates in the diary, beginning with Anne’s 13th birthday party on June 12, 1942, at which she received “Kitty,” her pet name for the diary. An entry less than a month later depicts a scene at her school that revealed Anne’s feistiness, her teacher comparing her complaints with the quack of a duck.
Less than a month later, her father spoke about a “hiding place” and a summons from the Gestapo.
“This means concentration camp,” the 13-year-old wrote in her diary.
A different emotion is conveyed as she starts to live beyond her world in her hiding place. Lamenting her new life in hiding, she dreams about a close friend abandoning her at a concentration camp.
Scenes progress in sequence:
Senseless bickering by a couple in hiding. News from the Russian front. Tender feelings toward her friend Peter. A Gestapo raid in her building.
For the text of the Finale, written six months before Anne penned her final words, Frid strikingly conveyed Anne’s refuge in the attic hiding place as she peered through the window. She wrote lovingly about the blue sky, the magnificent weather, Amsterdam’s canals, the sea of roofs of the city’s architecture, and the optimism that must be maintained despite all loss.
Throughout the sequence, Buccleugh captured Anne’s ebullient optimism with loving tenderness. The instruments gradually went silent. The stage went black.
Anne died in 1945 at Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, likely of typhus. She was 15.
Although Opera Birmingham’s attention has veered away from mainstage productions in recent years, its focus has shifted toward thought-provoking productions outside the operatic mainstream. In 2024, it commissioned Carla Lucero and Marianna Mott Newirth for touch, an operatic sequel to the Helen Keller biography, The Miracle Worker.
Prior to that, the company presented Susan Kander‘s dwb (Driving While Black), which depicted an African American mother’s anguish at teaching her son how to react if pulled over by police. Others include Sidney Marquez Boquiren and Daniel Neer’s Independence Eve, Tom Cipullo’s Glory Denied, Ricky Ian Gordon’s Green Sneakers and Orpheus and Euridice, and Jake Heggie’s Three Decembers.
