April 23, 2025
By Clive Paget

Man’s inhumanity to man is also at the heart of Gerald Cohen’s opera Steal a Pencil for Me. Based on the true story of Holocaust survivors Jaap and Ina Polak, a couple whom Cohen knew personally, the source material is letters that passed secretly from one to the other while imprisoned first in the Westerbork transit camp and ultimately in Bergen-Belsen.

Deborah Brevoort’s proficient libretto follows the couple from 1940s Amsterdam, where each is locked in a troubled relationship with another person, through their capture and transportation by the Nazis, arrival in the camps where they are incarcerated along with their families, and the final liberation and return where they are reunited at last. (The title refers to Jaap’s need of a contraband pencil so he can write to Ina after agreeing under family pressure not to see one another again).

Cohen’s score is approachable, finely crafted and eminently singable, its musical language sitting comfortably on the classical side of the borderline between opera and musical theater. The feeling of a community walking blindly over the precipice is conveyed through gossipy parties in Amsterdam, while the couple’s coping mechanisms in the camps offer light-hearted interludes amid the darkness. Their awkward emotional entanglements are explored in a series of poignant arias and ensembles. The orchestrations, for a Britten-sized chamber ensemble, bring a crucial intimacy to the whole. Ari Pelto leads Opera Colorado’s forces with skill and the cast is strong, with Gideon Dabi an inspiring Jaap and Inna Dukach a characterful albeit rather squally Ina.