The Diary of Anne Frank is a monodrama

Monodrama

A monodrama is a theatrical or operatic piece played by a single actor or singer, usually portraying one character.- Monodrama in opera :...

 in 21 scenes for soprano

Soprano

A soprano is a voice type with a vocal range from approximately middle C to "high A" in choral music, or to "soprano C" or higher in operatic music. In four-part chorale style harmony, the soprano takes the highest part, which usually encompasses the melody...

 and chamber orchestra. The music and libretto

Libretto

A libretto is the text used in an extended musical work such as an opera, operetta, masque, oratorio, cantata, or musical. The term "libretto" is also sometimes used to refer to the text of major liturgical works, such as mass, requiem, and sacred cantata, or even the story line of a...

 are by Grigory Frid

Grigory Frid

Grigory Samuilovich Frid also Grigori Fried is a Russian composer of music written in many different genres, including chamber opera.Born in Petrograd, now St. Petersburg, Frid studied in the Moscow Conservatory with Heinrich Litinsky and Vissarion Shebalin. He was a soldier in the Second World War...

, after the eponymous diary.

The 13-year-old Anne Frank

Anne Frank

Annelies Marie "Anne" Frank is one of the most renowned and most discussed Jewish victims of the Holocaust. Acknowledged for the quality of her writing, her diary has become one of the world's most widely read books, and has been the basis for several plays and films.Born in the city of Frankfurt...

 is hiding with her family in a house in Amsterdam from July 1942 until their arrest in August 1944. She describes the people she sees, her different moods, and her emotions in her diary, telling of her pleasure at a birthday gift, or the sight of blue sky from her window, or her awakening attraction for Peter, but also her fear and loneliness. Frid wrote his own libretto for the work, structuring the original texts to provide a rich and varied portrait of Anne and the people around her in 21 brief scenes. The opera lasts one hour.

1. Prelude
2. Birthday
3. School
4. Conversation with Father
5. Summons to the Gestapo
6. The Hiding Place / The Bell Tower West
7. At the Little Window
8. I Was Told
9. Despair
10. Memory
11. Dream
12. Interlude
13. Duet of Mr and Mrs Van Daan
14. Thieves
15. Recitative
16. I Think of Peter
17. On the Russian Front
18. Razzia
19. Loneliness
20. Passacaglia
21. Finale

The opera was composed in 1968 and given a first performance with piano accompaniment at the All-Union House of Composers in Moscow on either 17 or 18 May 1972.

Its intimate nature and chamber orchestra scale means that it works well in small spaces and using small forces. In fact, Operabase

Operabase

Operabase is an on-line database of opera performances, opera houses and companies, performers themselves as well as their agents. Operabase, found at operabase.com, is owned and operated by Operabase Ltd, a company located in Luton, England. The site started in 1996 as the hobby of Mike Gibb,...

lists this as the most frequently staged lyric work by a living composer over the last five years.

Clips

• Opera Theatre Company, Dublin 2010. Scene 5: The Gestapo (1'29) Ani Maldjian; Conductor: Andrew Synnott; Directors: Annilese Miskimmon, Ingrid Craigie
• sireneOperntheater, Vienna 2008. Scenes 15,16: Peter (4'32) Nina Plangg; Conductor: Jury Everhartz; Director: Kristine Tornquist

Discography

Grigori Frid: Das Tagebuch der Anne Frank / The Diary of Anne Frank, Profil PH04044, Sandra Schwarzhaupt, soprano, Emsland Ensemble, Hans Erik Deckert, director