Case Western Reserve University has featured our production on their The Daily news website. From the post:
Cleveland premiere of opera
The season will be capped by a summer opera: The Cleveland premiere of The Sparks Fly Upward, written by Cathy Lesser Mansfield, senior instructor at the Case Western Reserve School of Law, will be staged June 9-12.
Mansfield is composer and librettist of the opera, which premiered in 2008. The opera story follows three German families in Berlin—two Jewish and one Christian—through the Holocaust.
“I think the piece conveys so many things: history, the importance of tolerance and diversity, the risks all societies face when someone becomes ‘the other’ and the power of one person to alter the trajectory of another’s life by engaging in acts of kindness and generosity, large and small,” Mansfield said. “I think conveying these things through music reaches into people’s hearts and souls in a unique way.”
Mansfield, a Cleveland native, said that while this will be the official Cleveland premiere of The Sparks Fly Upward, an early iteration of the piece had been performed at the Jewish Community Center in Cleveland Heights as far back as 1977.
https://thedaily.case.edu/maltz-performing-arts-centers-2022-spring-season-features-diverse-lineup-of-music-dance-and-drama/