Claude & Marcel

Music by Alyssa Weinberg / Libretto by Stephanie Fleischmann

World premiere

Their Story

In the early 20th century, Claude Cahun and Marcel Moore formed one of the most daring creative partnerships of the avant-garde. Romantic partners, collaborators, and radical thinkers, the two women created surrealist photographs that challenged gender, identity, and power decades before those conversations entered the mainstream. Living on the island of Jersey during World War II, the pair transformed their artistic imagination into acts of resistance against Nazi Germany. Disguised and working in secret, they produced subversive propaganda—poems, pamphlets, and messages designed to demoralize German soldiers —ultimately leaving behind a legacy of courage, defiance, and boundary-breaking art. Their story is one of love, creativity, and resistance—two artists who proved that imagination itself can be a powerful act of rebellion.

Claude & Marcel is the third complete length opera to be commissioned and developed by West Edge Opera.

The Artists

Nikola Printz

Claude Cahun
Hailed by the San Francisco Chronicle as "heartrending, musically resplendent…and thrillingly fierce," Nikola Printz is a 2025 Richard Tucker Career Grant recipient and 2021 Schwabacher Debut Recital Award winner whose rise from San Francisco Opera Adler Fellow to international star has been, in the words of critic Joshua Kosman, "an artistic sprint from apprentice to star.”
Sara LeMesh

Marcel Moore
Romanian-American soprano, praised for her "lush tone, exceptional high-register clarity, dramatic breadth, and fearless command," is at home in opera, concert, and chamber music, and is a devoted advocate of contemporary music. A First Prize winner at the Lyndon Woodside Oratorio-Solo Competition at Carnegie Hall. She holds degrees from Bard College-Conservatory of Music and Rice University.
Angela Yam

Charlotte
Praised as "radiant, " renowned for her impeccable musicianship and fierce stage presence. Equally at home in Baroque repertoire and world premieres, she has appeared with Boston Lyric Opera, Glimmerglass, Wolf Trap Opera, Opera Parallèle, Heartbeat Opera, and Boston Baroque. A Metropolitan Opera Laffont Competition district winner, she also composes art songs, chamber works, and operas.
Alyssa Weinberg

Composer
The Chicago Tribune calls her music "quite literally stunning," has been performed by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and Minnesota Orchestra, with honors from Opera America, New Music USA, and MacDowell. A Princeton PhD and Curtis alumna, she teaches composition at Mannes School of Music.
Stephanie Fleischmann

Librettist

Librettist Stephanie Fleischmann is a 2026 Guggenheim Fellow and winner of Opera America's Campbell Librettist Prize, and her work has been commissioned by LA Opera, Houston Grand Opera, and Santa Fe Opera. Seen & Heard International praised her writing as "the best new libretto I have experienced in years."
Elkhanah Pulitzer

Director
Has created productions for the Metropolitan Opera, San Francisco Opera, LA Opera, and Barcelona's Gran Teatre del Liceu, including John Adams's Antony and Cleopatra, which marked her Met debut in 2025. Her world-premiere staging of Sarah Kirkland Snider's HILDEGARD was named Best New Opera of 2026 by the Music Critics Association of North America.
Jonathan Khuner

Conductor
West Edge Opera's Music Director since 1986 (Artistic Director 1994–2009), conducting almost 90 of our productions, most recently Wozzeck. A Berkeley native and son of violinist Felix Khuner, he earned a mathematics degree at UC Berkeley before turning to music. For four decades he has been an assistant conductor at the Met, Lyric Opera of Chicago, and San Francisco Opera, and he led Albania's first-ever Wagner opera.