Dance roles: Abel, Adam, Eve, Cain, Cain’s wife, Henoch, Irad, Maviael, Mathusael, Lamech, Noema, the Stripling, people of Henoch
Singing role: Jehovah (baritone)
Read about the discovery of a manuscript vocal score for Cain, found in 2016, and the work’s world premiere which took place nearly ninety years after its composition.
Reviews
“‘Where is thy brother Abel?’ These words, uttered by baritone Adrian Eröd and emerging through a loudspeaker, rang through the hall and nearly lifted the audience out their seats. Although they had been warned by the program, the moment still had a powerful effect, just as Blitzstein planned it in 1930. . . . In Jehovah’s dialogue with Cain, Cain’s replies are supplied solely by orchestral gestures, and the effect is pure theater.”
– Juan Martin Koch, NMZ-Online (Neue Musikzeitung), 4 March 2019
“You can hear the influence of European modernism in this score—Boulanger here, Schoenberg there. (Blitzstein studied with both.) The music is truly effective, traversing many highways and byways of the classical tradition, and subsuming a wide range of influences into a deeply personal composition.”
– Michael Wruss, Oberösterreichische Nachrichten, 2 March 2019
“This attractive work—89 years after its composition—underscores yet again the fruitful and stylistically varies partnership of ballet and modern music during that era.”
– Manuel Brug, Die Welt, 2 March 2019