a work in progress performance followed by a talk back conversation with the composer
“Letters from the Affair” is an epistolary song cycle based upon a series of letters from the late 19th century written by the Impressionist painters Camille Pissarro and Edgar Degas.
I’ve framed these letters to tell a little-known story from the end of the 19th century about the relationship between two founding members of the French Impressionist Art movement, Camille Pissarro and Edgar Degas. The letters and the story centers on their friendship as artists and how it deteriorated and then completely ended as a result of the news and political fallout of the Dreyfus affair. This work presents an impression of the intimate personal ramifications of a national political event and is an illustration of how racism and anti-Semitism can destroy a friendship.