Bang on a Can’s Long Play Festival, in collaboration with American Opera Projects and The Neighborhood: An Urban Center for Jewish Life, will present “The Great Dictionary of the Yiddish Language.”

The concert premiere of the new chamber opera is set to take place on May 4 at South Oxford Space in Brooklyn, NY. The work tells the story of a Yiddish linguist’s effort to create the first comprehensive Yiddish dictionary. The opera has a runtime of 60 minutes and features Jason Weisinger, Gideon Dabi, Kristin Gornstein, Caitlin McKechney, and Kelly Guerra. Conductor David Bloom leads the ensemble.

“This brilliant opera,” said Professor Ofer Dynes of Columbia University per “[manages] to capture, more so than any learned article out there, the paradoxical nature of postwar yiddishism which was at the same time petty and visionary, cosmopolitan and parochial, messianic, but also highly pragmatic, lachrymose and uplifting, tragic and comic, and everything in between.”

Excerpts from the opera were previously presented on Toronto 96.FM in June 2023. The opera is supported in part by an award from the National Endowment of the Arts.