From Stage to Vault: Three Yiddish Libretti

Opera’s presence in popular culture has shifted in the last century. A film score or advertisement might feature the Habanera or the Toreador song from Carmen, but opera’s appearance in popular culture has waned. In the early twentieth century, however, opera was a prominent part of mainstream popular culture in the United States, Europe, and beyond. Opera excerpts made their way into film and vaudeville performances, and sheet music and recordings were widely consumed. Yiddish speakers in the United States were no exception and had a number of ways to access opera, through fully staged productions in Italian and English, productions in Yiddish, and opera excerpts performed in concert. Yiddish speakers also had the opportunity to read about opera in a variety of forms, including libretti.

We recently received a donation of three of these rare opera libretti from Leslie Back. They belonged to Leslie’s grandfather, Nathan Samalin, who left Russia as a young man in the early 1900s and made his way to New York by way of Paris. He was an opera and arts enthusiast and Yiddish book collector. Leslie recalls that he would regularly listen to the Metropolitan Opera radio broadcasts.

Nathan’s libretti of Carmen, Faust, and La Traviata are exciting additions to our collection; only the New York Public Library and the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research have copies of all three. Written by Hillel Vikhnin and published in 1908 by the Jewish Libretto Publishing Company, they include a biography of the composer, a character list, plot summaries, and translations of key arias. The covers feature internationally famed opera singers in full costume, a rarity for this period. Vikhnin’s commentary deftly links the operas to Jewish audiences, describing Carmen composer Georges Bizet as a “brilliant Jewish composer.” (This may reflect the occasional attribution of Sephardic ancestry to Bizet, but this claim is unsubstantiated by Bizet’s official biographies.)

Another point of interest are the advertisements found at the end of the booklets, including ads for a piano firm, a liquor store, and, of course, a beauty product. In the Faust libretto, an advertisement for Bernshteyn and Harrison’s face bleach promises to get rid of “pimples, freckles, and other spots” and to make one’s face “clean and smooth,” adding that a woman with such “pimples, freckles, and other spots loses 90 percent of her charm.” The libretti and their contents indicate aspirations of and assimilation into American society, trying to match the latest fashions and interests of the day.

Born and raised in Vilna, Vikhnin immigrated to New York in 1904, then moved to Philadelphia in 1909. He was a writer, translator, news editor, and music critic. He translated primarily from Russian into Yiddish, including Tolstoy’s non-fiction work and the works of early science-fiction writer Nicholas Alexandrovich Rubakin. He served as a staff writer for the Forverts in New York. His music criticism began in earnest in the United States, first with the libretti printed in New York; in Philadelphia, he became music critic for Di idishe velt (The Jewish World).

In addition to writing, Vikhnin also performed as a tenor. According to scholar Mark Slobin, in 1904 he performed at the Jewish Labor Bund’s Concert and Ball. The New York concert featured operatic excerpts by Rubinstein, Donizetti, and Tchaikovsky, as well as declamations and orchestral music. Such concerts, with operatic excerpts, orchestral excerpts, and other genres, were typical of the time. Many Yiddish speakers would attend mixed-genre concerts that included operatic excerpts, classical music, and folk songs. Tickets for such concerts were affordable, allowing many to attend. Performers included opera singers of the day, as well as khazonim (cantors), who would dabble in operatic performance.

Vikhnin’s libretti of Carmen, Faust, and La Traviata were one resource for Yiddish-speaking opera enthusiasts, and are all bibliographic rarities. Each booklet is numbered: Carmen is number one, Faust is number three, and La Traviatta is number four. Libretto number two is yet to be discovered; a search on WorldCat, a database of major library collections worldwide, for works published by the Jewish Libretto Publishing Company yields only the three libretti we have now. Vikhnin’s entry in Leksikon fun der nayer yidisher literatur, a bibliographic dictionary of Yiddish writers, states that Vikhnin also published a libretto of Aida; perhaps that was libretto number two. Curiously, the Carmen and Faust booklets promise a list of forty-four libretti that are “ready to be printed,” though La Traviatta is missing such a list. Perhaps Vikhnin’s ambitions did not pan out, or his move to Philadelphia brought the project to an end. Whatever the case may be, these libretti offer a glimpse into the cultural interests of Yiddish speakers in the early 20th century and add to our rich collections here at the Center.

Thank you to Leslie Back for her generous donation of the libretti of Carmen, Faust, and La Traviata. Images of Nathan Samalin are courtesy of Leslie Back.

—Dina Gorelik, 2024–25 bibliography & digital collections fellow

Further reading on opera and Yiddish speakers:

Slobin, Mark. Tenement Songs: The Popular Music of the Jewish Immigrants. United Kingdom, University of Illinois Press, 1996.

Smolov Levy, Daniela . “Grand Opera for Yiddish Speakers in Early Twentieth-Century America! Who Knew?!” Digital Yiddish Theatre Project, May 2019.

Smolov Levy, Daniela. “Who Says Opera Is Always Long? Opera Excerpts for Yiddish Speakers.” YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, June 2023.