(Photo by Jonathan Slaff)

In the 1970s, Leonard Lehrman, a Kansas-born but Long Island-raised composer of 12 operas and seven musicals whose major mentors include Elie Siegmeister, Lenore Anhalt, and Olga Heifetz,  wrote “Sima,” an opera about a Jewish girl orphaned by a pogrom in 1905 in Ukraine. For decades, the composer attempted to bring the opera to a New York stage only to get rejected time and again. But in 2026, the composer is finally getting the chance to bring not just one, but two, of his dozen operas to New York City.

“Sima” recently had its premiere at the Theater for the New City alongside Lehrman’s other work “E.G.: A Musical Portrait of Emma Goldman.” The productions opened on Jan. 8, 2026 and are set to run for the entire month.

“It was a long road to get here,” Lehrman told OperaWire during a rehearsal ahead of the Jan. 8 premiere.

Four Companies

“Sima” had previous performances in Davos and Berlin in 1981 and 1984, respectively, but had yet to grace a stage in the Big Apple. It wasn’t for a lack of trying though. Lehrman noted that four different companies had given the opera a look, but in the end couldn’t find a way.

First up was the After Dinner Opera Company, founded in 1940 by Richard Flusser. The organization had done Lehrman’s “New World,” an opera by what Columbus did to the Indians, in 1991 and also co-sponsored the production of “Sacco and Vanzetti,” in 2001 and then with at Lehman College, directed by Ben Spearman, in 2022. The opera was started by Marc Blitzstein and Lehrman completed. The work was ultimately nominated for a Pulitzer.

In the 1990s, Flusser had considered “Sima” and he referred Lehrman to then-music director Conrad Strasser. Strasser played through the opera and as he did, Lehrman “already had people in mind to cast it.” And while Strasser thought it was a “beautiful opera” he also felt it was “too much work.”

From there, Lehrman spoke to director Joseph Paschetta who moved fast.

“We actually cast it,” Lehrman narrated. “I was working at the Metropolitan Opera at the time, and I got space at the Met to rehearse with the people that we had cast. We were offered the Beacon Theater on Broadway.”

But then, Pachetta took one look at the theater and thought it was an impossible venue for the opera. The project was put back on ice.

Next up was the Long Island Committee on Soviet Jewry. The Committee was very interested in the work. Then reality set in.

“They slowly realized that you don’t raise money with an opera, you raise money for an opera. And opera doesn’t make money, it costs money. And so they slowly distanced themselves from it.”

The seemingly final straw came in the form of the New York Lyric Opera, “which was very interested in doing it.”

“The director sat through and read that, listened to the whole video and was thinking of doing it,” Lehrman explained. “And then he decided to do the magnum opus of my teacher, Ellie Siegmeister, ‘The Plow and the Stars,’ based on Sean o’ Casey’s play. He did it at Symphony Space.”

And that was it. The company folded soon thereafter and “Sima” never got a chance.

A New Opportunity

But then in March 2024, Lehrman got a call that changed everything. Alyssa Moira, a director at Theater for the New City, was interested in working with the composer and the rest is history.

But the challenges didn’t end there.

Rehearsals got underway and as the opening night approached, the lead soprano dropped out.

“It’s been a crisis, but we were, you know, dealing with it as best we can,” Lehrman said, noting that the company was able to bring on Christine Browning and Claire Iverson to do the role of Regina Krasovitzky, the lead in Sima.

The Theater for the New City offered Lehrman 12 performances over three weekends, but there was no way he could pull off so many of just “Sima.” So the decision was made to do six and use the remaining six shows for another of Lehrman’s works.

“E.G.: : A Musical Portrait of Emma Goldman” was written in the 1980s and has been the most performed of Lehrman’s 272 works with 44 productions in five countries. Lehrman was inspired by a play by Howard Zinn, which focused on Emma Goldman trying to get back to America, having been deported by J. Edgar Hoover. What makes this one unique is that the production, headlined by Caryn Hartglass, also features the composer himself undertaking several roles at the piano.

“It’s very thrilling,” Lehrman told OperaWire about performing his own work. “Watching someone else do it can be lovely too, but at least half the time I feel the way Ned Rorem did, listening to someone else accompanying his songs – he’d rather be doing it himself.

“I’m performing all the men in Emma Goldman’s life, and Caryn Hartglass has devoted herself, body, soul, and voice, to the title role in a way any composer could envy,” he added. 

This marks the first time “E.G.” is done in New York City since 2007.