Published in 1962, The Garden of the Finzi-Continis—part of the Italian Jewish writer and partisan Giorgio Bassani’s sextet of novels about his native Ferrara—is best known because of the 1970 film adaptation. Now it has also been made into an opera, which debuted at the Museum of Jewish Heritage. Jay Nordlinger writes in his review:
In the story, the Finzi-Continis are upper-crust Jews, utterly fixed in Italian society (or so everyone thinks). Other Jews in the story are middle-crust, you might say. The Finzi-Continis are anti-Fascist Republicans, and other Jews in Ferrara are strongly, proudly Fascist. A boy named Giorgio—a stand-in for the author, Giorgio Bassani—loves the Finzi-Contini girl, Micól. The Finzi-Contini boy, Alberto, loves his college roommate, Giampi (a Communist in the bargain). Neither love is requited. Some of the characters in the story escape Italy to Switzerland; everyone else perishes in the Holocaust.
“Perishes.” What a weak, prissy word. They were murdered.
Sitting in the theater, I asked myself a question: “Can you divorce the score and the libretto from the story? The story is, obviously, a very moving one. Can you judge the score and the libretto independently of that?” Yes. The composer and librettist have very good material to work with, no doubt. But they have, again, done very well with it.
As I was leaving the theater—the museum—I happened to glance across the water. There was the Statue of Liberty, all lit up. I could not help thinking how precious a thing liberty is, and how vulnerable.
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