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
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Alyssa Weinberg
COMPOSER
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Stephanie Fleischmann
LIBRETTIST
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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.