There might come a time when Angels in America is irrelevant. 2017 isn’t that year. I expect the next three years to be locks as well.

But that’s OK, because isn’t it a magnificent work? Written by Tony Kushner and filled with Jewish imagery (as well as Christian and even a surreal Mormon animatronic puppet show), the Pulitzer-prize winning Angels in America is a seminal notch on the bedpost of Jewish theatrical achievement.

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Jewcy is on a summer residency! To read this piece, and our others for July and August 2017, go to our big sister site, Tablet Magazine!

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Have you ever watched a Tony Kushner play and thought it was operatic? Well, you wouldn’t be the only one, and as a result you can see Louis Ironson, Ethel Rosenberg, Roy Cohn, and the gang trade in monologues for arias in Angels in America… the opera. Flying angels, imminent mortality, ghosts, heartbreak, Mormons, the show has it all.

The man behind this adaptation is Péter Eötvös, a Hungarian musical artist, whose other work has included an opera about Lilith (neat!), and the libretto has been adapted by Mari Mezei. While the piece is about a decade old, it’s actually making its New York (though not American) premiere in a few days, through the New York City Opera for a short run beginning this Saturday.

Picture the intensity of the two-part, seven hour play squished into a two-and-a-half-hour opera, infused with jazz and pop music. Remember, Tony Kushner wrote a sung-through musical based partially on his own childhood, so this isn’t even entirely untrod territory. So this adaptation makes for a very Jewish opera— for example, it’s condensed, but it keeps moments like the scene where Ethel Rosenberg sings “Tum Balalaika” to a dying Roy Cohn (this time in an eerie off-kilter way), one of the most Jewish moments in theatre of any genre in the last fifty years.

Writing for the New York Times, Bernard Holland reviewed the 2006 Boston production of Angels in America, saying, “Mr. Eötvös, a Hungarian composer long residing in France, has so acutely touched Mr. Kushner’s unequivocally American personalities… He has written truly theatrical music that advances texts rather than calling attention to itself.”

But if you’re not in New York, or can’t make any of the four performances of this run, don’t despair. You can actually watch the entire 2006 French production of Angels in America below. God bless YouTube.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YB5YbyzRgok

Angels in America runs at the Rose Theater at Lincoln Center through June 16.

Image via Jazz at Lincoln Center.

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Steven Spielberg’s next film is another Jewish piece, addressing one of the most notorious cases of state-sanctioned anti-Semitism of the nineteenth century: The Kidnapping of Edgardo Mortara.

The short version of the story is this:

An Italian Jewish merchant family, the Mortaras, without warning had one of their children, Edgardo, forcibly taken from their home by military police when the boy was six, in 1858. This was because, as an infant, Edgardo had grown sick, and a Catholic servant claimed that she had given him an “emergency baptism,” so that he could enter heaven upon death. Edgardo survived, and years later the Church was claiming that the boy was technically a Christian, and therefore his Jewish family was forbidden from raising him. A storm of legal and political conflict followed as the Mortaras tried to get their son back, and he child became a pawn in larger conflicts of the very power of the papacy in Italian unifcation.

Spielberg is directing and producing the film adapted from a 1997 book of the same name by Jewish historian David Kertzer. And if Spielberg wasn’t impressive enough, adapting the book into a screenplay is playwright Tony Kushner.

What we know of the cast so far is impressive too, beginning with Spielberg’s latest recurring star Mark Rylance. Rylance will play Pope Pius IX, the central figure working against the Mortara family. This is exciting news; Rylance is one of the greatest living actors in the theatre world. Essentially, he thought, “Why not give movies a try?,” walked on to the film set for Bridge of Spies, and the Academy handed him an Oscar.

Speaking of Oscars, Star Wars star and real-life fairy-tale prince of our dreams Oscar Isaac is also set to star in this film, though it’s unclear as whom (could he be a member of the Mortara family, perhaps?).

The film is extremely promising, but prepare for a tragedy: The true story didn’t have a happy ending; Edgardo was not returned to his family, and in fact learned in custody of the Catholic Church to fear and reject the Mortaras. The arguably brainwashed young man became a priest, and though eventually reconnected with his mother in his twenties, he spent the remainder of her life urging her to convert to Catholicism (she did not).

The film is set to begin filming at the beginning of 2017, for release in the end of that year.

Image Credit: The Kidnapping of Edgardo Mortara, painting by Moritz Daniel Oppenheim, 1862. Via Wikimedia.

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Apparently, today is #HeterosexualPrideDay, because people who aren’t marginalized for their sexual identity feel left out during the one time of year designated for LGBT minorities, particularly in the aftermath of a violent hate crimes that killed dozens because they were queer.

But, you know, they didn’t get a parade, which is a bummer.

So an obvious way to celebrate would be a list of some amazing non-straight Jewish figures, but it’s really difficult to just pick a few: After all, Jews are more likely than Christians to identify as gay.

Even so, let’s narrow it down to a few famous Jews who would be BANNED FROM PARTICIPATING in Heterosexual Pride Day. Let’s try a few who had something particular to say about being a minority:

1. Lesley Gore— The late, great, pop singer-songwriter came out as a lesbian later in life only because she hadn’t really bothered to do so before; her loved ones had known for ages:

“Well, there were was very little acceptance of gay people. I think the record industry, by and large what’s left of it, is still totally homophobic… It’s always been a patriarchal situation, and it always puts women, not necessarily down, but certainly on a lower rung.”

2. Barney Frank— The congressman is one of the most politically powerful LGBT people in the country, and he came out in 1987, certainly not an easy time to publicly identify as gay:

“I’m used to being in the minority. I’m a left-handed gay Jew. I’ve never felt, automatically, a member of any majority.”

3. Harvey Milk—The politician, gay rights activist, and all-around trailblazer addressed during his life the very-real possibility that he could be assassinated for his identity, and ultimately, he was, but it never stopped him:

“Coming out is the most political thing you can do.”

4. Tony Kushner— The great playwright often writes queer themes into his work, and has never shied away from the political:

“If you’re gay and you can’t hold hands, or you’re black and you can’t catch a taxi, or you’re a woman and you can’t go into the park, you are aware there’s a menace. That’s costly on a psychic level. The world should be striving to make all its members secure.”

5.Peaches— born Merrill Beth Nisker, the raunchy musician tends to refuse most labels, identifies as queer, and often speaks her mind about LGBT rights:

“Gay men and gay women have to question standards and authorities in themselves right away when they realize, ‘Oh my God. Everything I see around me is directed towards boy-meets-girl, girl-meets-boy.’ And women do a lot of questioning because we have been so sexualized throughout the years, so now we are totally on top.”

And a very happy Heterosexual Pride Day to you, too!

Image credit: Wikipedia, YouTube, and Mike Lecht via Flickr

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• President Obama won 69 percent of the Jewish vote. Tee hee. [JTA]

• District Diva Mindy Meyer lost, big time, in last night’s election. We’re talking three percent of the vote. [Forward]

• Tony Kushner talks Lincoln in the Obama era. [LA Weekly]

• The Gaza crocodile has been caught and returned to the zoo it escaped from two years ago. “We hope he lives a good life here with his wives,” a policeman actually said. [Yahoo!]

• Jewcy favorite Jason Segel might not be involved, but the Muppets sequel will feature new music from Flight of the Conchords’ Muppet-grammy-winner Bret McKenzie. [Vulture]

• Ithaca grad Ben Feldman called his aunt in Chicago to tell her about his Emmy nomination for his role on Mad Men. [Access Hollywood]

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