Local Arts Org Celebrates Milestone 50th Premiere

Music of Remembrance Marks Milestone 50th World Premiere

The Dialogue of Memories Brings Elie Wiesel to the Opera Stage for the First Time

Sunday, May 17 • Benaroya Hall

SEATTLE, WA – May 6, 2026 – This month, Seattle-based Music of Remembrance (MOR) presents its 50th world premiere with The Dialogue of Memories, a new opera by composer Tom Cipullo and acclaimed Chicago Tribune journalist Howard Reich. The hometown debut takes the stage Sunday, May 17, at Benaroya Hall, before the premiere production tours to the Presidio Theatre in San Francisco May 20, and the Studebaker Theater in Chicago May 23-24.

“With The Dialogue of Memories, Music of Remembrance reaches a creative milestone: our 50th world premiere,” said MOR Artistic Director Mina Miller. “We commission work that asks audiences to bear witness – not only to history, but to the present it shapes. Reaching this landmark moment here in Seattle, with a story about who carries memory forward, feels exactly right.”

Recent MOR commissions have taken on the women’s rights struggle in Iran, the separation of families at the US-Mexico border, and the threat of nuclear war. The organization has premiered new works by more than 20 contemporary composers, including Ryuichi Sakamoto, Jake Heggie, Lori Laitman, Mary Kouyoumdjian, and Paul Schoenfield, whose MOR commission Camp Songs was a finalist for the 2003 Pulitzer Prize in Music. Seattle artists, including Spectrum Dance Theater's Donald Byrd, have also created original pieces for the company, contributing to a body of work that spans song cycles, chamber works, film scores, choreography, and operas.

The Dialogue of Memories joins that lineage, inspired by Reich's front-page reporting on his mother Sonia's hidden Holocaust past – and the unlikely friendship he formed with Nobel Peace Prize laureate Elie Wiesel as he investigated her story. The Dialogue of Memories is the first opera to portray Wiesel as a character, premiering just as the world marks the 10th anniversary of his passing.

Cipullo's score weaves echoes of Schumann, Gershwin, and Tchaikovsky into his own contemporary musical language, unfolding in episodic scenes that move between past and present. Throughout, Wiesel challenges Reich to tell his mother’s story – and decide what he means to do with the legacy he has inherited.

It's a question that Music of Remembrance has asked across its 50 commissions, each with its own lens on what to keep, and what to carry forward. The Dialogue of Memories offers Wiesel's answer directly to the audience: “We are ordered to hope.”

The Dialogue of Memories
World Premiere

Composer: Tom Cipullo
Librettist: Howard Reich with Tom Cipullo
Based on The Art of Inventing Hope: Intimate Conversations with Elie Wiesel

Conductor: Alastair Willis
Director: Erich Parce
Media Design: Peter Crompton

Elie Wiesel: Daniel Belcher
Sonia Reich: Megan Marino
Howard Reich: Dominic Armstrong

MOR Chamber Ensemble: Christina Medawar, flute; Laura DeLuca, clarinet; Mikhail Shmidt, violin; Walter Gray, cello; Cristina Valdes, piano

Sunday, May 17, 2026 @ 4:00pm
Seattle, Washington
Benaroya Hall (200 University Street)
Tickets $60; Students $25 (ID required)
https://musicofremembrance.org/show-details/memories

About Music of Remembrance
Established in 1998, Music of Remembrance (MOR) pays tribute to historic memory and directly confronts challenges to human rights and dignity today. In addition to its work discovering and performing music from the Holocaust, MOR is admired around the world for its leadership in commissioning, presenting its 50th new work to close the 2025/26 season. These contributions to the repertoire include varied chamber ensembles, song cycles, choral works, dance music, film scores, musical dramas, and full-length operas – all using art to examine compelling issues in today’s world. MOR’s online concerts, nine albums, three documentary films, and extensive outreach programs extend that impact well beyond the concert hall.

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