The Yellow Ticket is a multimedia event featuring a rare 1918 silent film and an original score by violinist/vocalist Alicia Svigals , performed live along with virtuoso new-music pianist Marilyn Lerner.
Alicia Svigals is the world's foremost klezmer fiddler, a founder of the Grammy-winning Klezmatics and a 2014 NEA MacDowell Fellow in composition. “The Yellow Ticket” stars an adolescent Pola Negri, who would later become the legendary femme fatale of the silent era. It tells the story of an innocent young Jewish woman from a Polish shtetl who is constrained by anti-Semitic restrictions to lead a double life in a brothel while attempting to study medicine in Tsarist Russia. The film includes precious footage of the former Jewish quarter of Warsaw and the people who once lived there.
Pre-eminent film scholar Tom Gunning said about the score: "I believe this accompaniment to The Yellow Ticket is one of the most powerful I have heard. It evokes not only a sense of the contemporary context of the culture in which the film took place, but our awareness of what was done to it afterwards. The sound of piano, violin and the human voice evoke passion, energy and a profound sense of mourning, bridging the historical distance between us and this film as eloquently as does Pola Negri’s extraordinary face."
Svigals was awarded the Foundation for Jewish Culture's annual New Jewish Music Network Music Commission for the Yellow Ticket, and a Trust for Mutual Understanding grant to bring the show to Poland next year. She has brought the show, to great acclaim, to:
Alicia Svigals is the world's foremost klezmer fiddler, a founder of the Grammy-winning Klezmatics and a 2014 NEA MacDowell Fellow in composition. “The Yellow Ticket” stars an adolescent Pola Negri, who would later become the legendary femme fatale of the silent era. It tells the story of an innocent young Jewish woman from a Polish shtetl who is constrained by anti-Semitic restrictions to lead a double life in a brothel while attempting to study medicine in Tsarist Russia. The film includes precious footage of the former Jewish quarter of Warsaw and the people who once lived there.
Pre-eminent film scholar Tom Gunning said about the score: "I believe this accompaniment to The Yellow Ticket is one of the most powerful I have heard. It evokes not only a sense of the contemporary context of the culture in which the film took place, but our awareness of what was done to it afterwards. The sound of piano, violin and the human voice evoke passion, energy and a profound sense of mourning, bridging the historical distance between us and this film as eloquently as does Pola Negri’s extraordinary face."
Svigals was awarded the Foundation for Jewish Culture's annual New Jewish Music Network Music Commission for the Yellow Ticket, and a Trust for Mutual Understanding grant to bring the show to Poland next year. She has brought the show, to great acclaim, to:
- Lincoln Center
- National Gallery in D.C.
- Mass MoCA
- Miami International Film Festival
- Houston Museum of Fine Arts
- Detroit Institute of the Arts
- Benaroya Symphony Hall, Seattle
- Chicago University, Logan Center for the Arts
- Dalhousie University, Dunn Theatre
- Swarthmore College, Lang Concert Hall
- Ashkenaz Festival, Toronto