Claude & Marcel

Music by Alyssa Weinberg Libretto by Stephanie Fleischmann

In Italian with English Surtitles

The opera tells the story of Claude Cahun and Marcel Moore: two women – romantic and artistic partners - Jewish activists and surrealist photographers who used their art to magnify resistance against Nazi Germany.

Claude & Marcel is the third complete length opera to be commissioned and developed by West Edge Opera. Claude & Marcel was commissioned in 2023 and will premiere in August 2027.

Orchestral Preview Performance

August 23rd at 3pm

SFMOMA’s Wattis Theater

Meet the Creative Team and Cast

  • Alyssa Weinberg

    COMPOSER

  • Stephanie Fleischmann

    LIBRETTIST

  • Elkhanah Pulitzer

    DIRECTOR

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—slipping them into pockets, vehicles, and public spaces. Arrested and sentenced to death for their actions, they ultimately survived the war, 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.