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Tom Cipullo

  • Home
  • Biography
  • Works
  • Quotes
  • Upcoming Performances
  • Recordings/Albums
  • The Parting - Chamber Opera in One Act
  • Glory Denied
  • After Life
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  • Mayo
  • Bibliography
  • Contact
  • Music
  • Hobson's Choice - Comedy in Two Acts
  • The Dialogue of Memories

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The Dialogue of Memories 

Chamber Opera in One Act

Music by Tom Cipullo

Libretto by Howard Reich with Tom Cipullo

Based on The Art of Inventing Hope: Intimate Conversations with Elie Wiesel by Howard Reich

 

The Dialogue of Memories was commissioned by Music of Remembrance (Mina Miller, Artistic and Founding Director) and made possible through a generous gift from the Clovis Foundation.

Premiere performance by Music of Remembrance at Benaroya Hall, Seattle, Washington on May 17, 2026. Subsequent performances at the Presidio Theater (San Francisco) on May 20, and the Studebaker Theater (Chicago) on May 23 and 24, 2026.

Workshopped at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music (Heather Mathews, Director of Opera and Musical Theater, SFCM) in January 2026.

 

    The dialogue of memories.  One memory appeals to another.  Memory has its own mystery and its own power.  Memory proves clever enough to share itself in other memories, whether you know it or not.  Maybe it is being done in darkness, but it is being done.

                                                             - Elie Wiesel

 

Synopsis

Decades after the fact, Sonia Reich’s long-suppressed memories of a childhood in hiding during the Holocaust have come back to haunt her.  As the other members of Sonia’s middle-class family sleep, Sonia spends her nights keeping watch for the evil she feels sure will return – even in the safe confines of mid-century Chicago.  Her adult son Howard, though raised in a loving home above the family bakery, cannot escape the fact that the trauma of his mother’s early life is now part of his history as well.  A journalist with the Chicago Tribune, Howard is assigned to interview Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel, and it is Wiesel’s wisdom that bring him enlightenment and peace.

                                         Characters

                                   Sonia Reich, an elderly Holocaust survivor…mezzo soprano

                                   Howard Reich, journalist and Sonia’s son…  tenor

                                   Elie Wiesel…                                                        baritone

Instrumentation

flute, clarinet, violin, cello, piano

Duration: 60 minutes

Links to additional sources

Fox TV Interview with Howard Reich about The Dialogue of Memoires

Press Release for The Music of Remembrance Premiere

 

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