Artist creates multiple layered images of a woman with dark hair styled in curls, wearing a white shirt with hand-drawn text and symbols, and makeup with red lipstick and a small red heart on her cheek, against a black background.

Claude & Marcel: Orchestral Preview

World premiere August 2027

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


  • A woman with shoulder-length brown hair, wearing a black top and a gold necklace, smiling softly at the camera against a plain light background.

    Alyssa Weinberg

    COMPOSER

  • A portrait of an older woman with glasses, gray hair, and a blue patterned blouse, smiling softly at the camera against a plain background.

    Stephanie Fleischmann

    LIBRETTIST

  • Close-up portrait of a smiling woman with short, curly brown hair, blue eyes, wearing small earrings and a black blazer.

    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.

Two women looking into mirrors with surprised and happy expressions.