Life

And the Rat Sang: Nava Semel’s Opera To Open in Canada

By Dan Friedman October 28, 2009

Nava Semel comes from a musical family. Her brother, Shlomo Artzi, is one of Israel’s most famous singers. She, however, is a novelist whose 2001 book “And the Rat Laughed” (“Tzchok shel achbarosh”) has yet to find an American publisher but has indeed found a North American venue for it — Toronto’s Opera York.

The Hebrew opera, written by Ella Milch-Sheriff in conjunction with Semel starts off in the future with flashes back to the present, in which a grandmother Holocaust survivor recounts her traumatic story to her granddaughter. Semel tells part of her own grandparents’ story here this week at the Forward.

Dan Friedman is the former executive editor and whisky correspondent of the Forward, and is the author of a book about Tears for Fears, the ’80s emo rock band.

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