Oratorio about Shanghai’s Jews opens in China
Émigré, a new oratorio about Jewish refugees who fled Nazi Germany for Shanghai in the late 1930s, begins with a song by two brothers, Josef and Otto, as their steamship approaches a Chinese harbor.
“Shanghai, beacon of light on a silent shore,” they sing. “Shanghai, answer these desperate cries.”
The emigration of thousands of Central European and Eastern European Jews to China in the late 1930s and early 1940s — and their survival of the Holocaust — is one of World War II’s most dramatic but little-known chapters. In Émigré, a 90-minute oratorio that premiered this month in Shanghai and will come to the New York Philharmonic in February, the stories of those refugees and their attempts to build new lives in war-torn China are front and center.
The piece, composed by Aaron Zigman with lyrics by Mark Campbell and Brock Walsh, has been in the works for several years, a commission of the Philharmonic, the Shanghai Symphony Orchestra and its music director, Long Yu. But it is opening at a delicate time, with tensions high between China and the United States and with the Israel-Hamas war spurring heated debates in the cultural sphere.
The war in the Middle East is a sensitive subject in China, which has sought to pitch itself as a neutral broker in the conflict, though state-controlled media has emphasized the harm suffered by civilians in the Gaza Strip while giving scant coverage to Hamas’ initial attack.
Israel has expressed “deep disappointment” at China’s muted response to the Hamas attack. Xi Jinping, China’s top leader, on Tuesday called for an immediate cease-fire in Gaza and for “the restoration of the legitimate national rights of Palestine.”
In recent weeks, promotional materials in China for Émigré have rarely mentioned its plot and listed its Chinese title, Shanghai! Shanghai! The major stateowned Chinese news outlets did not cover the premiere this month, though an English-language television channel for foreign audiences did.
The creators of Émigré, which takes place during the Second Sino-Japanese War, said they hoped the piece would help underscore a shared sense of humanity in a time of renewed strife.
“I don’t think music and politics really belong in the same sentence,” Zigman said. “I just want people to be human and kind, and there are certain parts of this piece that help that vision.”
In 2019, Yu, worried the stories of Jewish refugees in his hometown were being forgotten, came up with the idea for the piece. He approached the New York Philharmonic, which has had a partnership with the Shanghai Symphony since 2014, about commissioning the work together.
Yu said he never expected the oratorio to premiere in wartime but hoped its message would resonate.
“We always make the same mistakes in our lives, and we have to learn from history,” he said. “We can be inspired by the kindness and support that Shanghai showed in this moment.”
For Émigré, Zigman said he was eager to create a “multicultural love story” that drew attention to the violent struggles unfolding in Asia and Europe at the time. Those include the 1937 massacre in Nanjing, an eastern Chinese city, in which tens of thousands of Chinese civilians were killed by occupying Japanese forces; and Kristallnacht, the wave of antisemitic violence carried out by Nazis in 1938.
“Our project is really about bridging cultures and humanity and love, hope, loss and tragedy,” Zigman said.
Émigré tells the story of Otto, a rabbinical student, and Josef, a doctor, who leave Berlin for the port city of Trieste, Italy, and board a boat headed for Shanghai.
The brothers are anguished about leaving their parents and homeland but try to settle into life in China. Josef is interested in traditional Chinese medicine and visits an herbal medicine shop, where he meets Lina, the daughter of the owner, who is grappling with the death of her mother in Nanjing. They fall in love, but their cross-cultural union draws scorn from their families.