‘The Sparks Fly Upward’ comes to Temple Sinai
"It’s an intricate work. It’s really an amazing work that’s very accessible at the same time."
On first blush, Cathy Mansfield might seem like an odd candidate to write an opera.
Mansfield is a law professor at Case Western Reserve Law School, a consumer law specialist who has taught a course on the Holocaust and the law, and a mother of college-aged twins — not the likeliest of people to spend her spare time composing music and writing a libretto.
In fairness, Mansfield studied theory and composition at the Cincinnati Conservatory and even toured in a child’s choir with Bob Hope. She performed on stage and, for a time, majored in theater at New York University before committing to law.
So, maybe its not that unusual that she wrote “The Sparks Fly Upward,” an opera that begins on Oct. 28, 1938, with the deportation of Polish Jews residing in Germany, and concludes with the liberation of Berlin in 1945 and the rededication of the Neue Synagogue in Berlin in 1995.
In fact, the initial spark for “Sparks” traces back more than 45 years, when Mansfield was hired by Cleveland’s Jewish Community Center to compose a piece while she was still in high school.
“Someone had done a piece about Esther and like every JCC in the United States, we did ‘Joseph and the Amazing Dreamcoat,’” she said.
The composition Mansfield wrote was about Job.
Not having the “constitution of an artist,” she said, she decided not to pursue music full time. Instead, motivated by the homelessness she saw in New York, she dove headfirst into helping heal the world’s ills.
“I ended up majoring in political science and then went to law school,” she said. “I was a poverty lawyer. I worked as a legal aid and then started teaching law.”
Mansfield took a few years off after the birth of her daughters and began working on music again.
After becoming a Silberman Fellow at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, focusing on law and the Holocaust, she decided to marry her two interests, returning to the Job pieces she wrote all those years ago and expanding them into a full-length opera about the Holocaust.
“The Job pieces are nested in the Holocaust story, and serve as a vehicle to ask, ‘Where’s God when things like this happen ?’ — which it, of course, doesn’t answer, but there is a discussion,” she said. “And the families, when they’re in hiding, read from the book of Job, and what’s happening in the streets of Berlin kind of matches what’s happening.”
Mansfield relied on primary sources to ensure her work was historically accurate.
“I met a survivor whose father was a caretaker at a synagogue in Berlin, where the scenes take place. He became a caretaker there after the Nuremberg Laws,” she said. “He was able to tell me things like, did the men and women sit separately? Was there a mechitza? Were women on the bimah? What time was service? Did people eat before they went to synagogue or after? Was there an oneg?”
Mansfield will be performing selections from “The Sparks Fly Upward” at Temple Sinai during its Shabbat service on Jan. 24, as well as holding a discussion about the opera after a screening of a recorded performance on Jan. 25. She’ll even flex her law professor muscle, delivering the lecture “Nazi Laws: From Democracy to Dictatorship,” on Jan. 23.
Her connection to Temple Sinai is the result of Jewish geography in full effect.
One of Mansfield’s daughters is a student at Carnegie Mellon University and attends Temple Sinai. Mansfield met Drew Barkley, the congregation’s executive director, through her daughter. It turns out that both Barkley and Mansfield grew up in Cleveland and attended neighboring schools.
And there’s another connection: Temple Sinai’s Cantor David Reinwald went to high school with Daniel Singer, who Mansfield met while singing in the Cleveland Orchestra Chorus, and who has conducted the opera. Singer is also the musical director of the Mendelssohn Choir of Pittsburgh.
“There are these funky connections,” Mansfield said.
For Barkley, learning about the opera was bashert.
“Her daughter Sarah became part of our growing young adult cohort,” Barkley said. “I like to hang out with the young adults and learned she was from Cleveland. We began texting, playing Jewish geography and talking about restaurants. Then her mom came for a visit one weekend and casually mentioned that she had written an opera about the Holocaust. I thought, ‘There’s a program here.’”
Barkley was impressed by Mansfield’s dedication to the work and the fact that she wrote the opera, coordinated the production and worked with the artists who performed it. After watching some of the production, he was sure the Pittsburgh community would think it had value.
“I’m in no way a qualified opera critic but I thought this was something that was really worth bringing here,” he said.
While Barkley might not have the training to give a qualified assessment, Reinwald is.
“I listened to the entirety of it,” he said, “and it’s beautifully composed. It’s an intricate work. It’s really an amazing work that’s very accessible at the same time. You’re able to follow the story and timeline of events that she has portrayed, and there are a few instrumental moments that are really powerful.”
Both Reinwald and Barkley stressed that while it’s an opera, no one should be intimidated by the form. The work is in English with a few Hebrew songs, but can be followed and enjoyed by everyone, they said.
Mansfield’s talk begins at 7 p.m. on Jan. 23. Shabbat services are held at 7 p.m. on Jan 24. The screening on Jan. 25 includes dinner beginning at 6 p.m.; attendees can bring their own food or buy a meal. Advance registration is required for the dinner. PJC
David Rullo can be reached at drullo@pittsburghjewishchronicle.org.
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