FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
April 2, 2004

CONTACT:
Cathy Lesser Mansfield, (515) 271-2076, (515) 991-8289, cathy.mansfield@drake.edu
Lisa Lacher, (515) 271-3119, (515) 202-1773, lisa.lacher@drake.edu

DRAKE LAW PROFESSOR COMPOSES HOLOCAUST OPERA

"There is a spirit in men, and the inspiration of the Almighty giveth them understanding." Cathy Lesser Mansfield has lived that passage from the Book of Job in the last few years, as the Drake University law professor strives to complete an opera that superimposes the biblical saga over the tale of a Jewish family caught up in Hitler's Germany.

"The Sparks Fly Upward" (the title comes from Job 5:7, "Man is born unto trouble as the sparks fly upward") will debut in concert at 8 p.m. Monday, April 19, in Drake's Performing Arts Hall, Harmon Fine Arts Center, 25th Street and Carpenter Avenue. The concert, which is free and open to the public, will feature a cast of 15, including many Drake music faculty and students.

"Even though the opera isn't complete, it's an amazing achievement," says Leanne Freeman-Miller, assistant professor of voice at Drake, who sings in the cast. "The text and music paint the emotions and terrifying experiences the Jews went through. It's very moving. I've sung a lot of Jewish music and this work is very much in the Jewish musical tradition."

Composing an opera may seem unusual for an international expert in consumer protection - Mansfield has lectured throughout the United States, testified before Congress and been quoted in The New York Times and Consumer Reports magazine. But the portions of the work dealing with Job predate her law career. The Cleveland native, 44, wrote its precursor in 1977 after her junior year of high school. The result, produced at the Jewish Community Center in Cleveland, earned Mansfield a scholarship to the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music. Eventually, she transferred to New York University and discovered the law.

"By the time I graduated from college I was on the track that led to my present career," says Mansfield, who has taught at Drake since 1996. "I kept doing music all along as an avocation, but didn't really do anything with this whole show that I had written."

It was after her twins, Sarah and Megan, were born in 1994 that Mansfield quit teaching for a while, dusted off the composition and began notating it. "We had a Baptist nanny with whom I became really good friends," Mansfield says. "She suggested combining the Job stuff already written with a story about the Holocaust."

The opera follows a German Jewish family in Berlin beginning with the autumn of 1938, which culminated in Kristallnacht, a night of orchestrated attacks against Jews, their businesses and synagogues. At various times during the war that ensues, the family goes into hiding. To entertain each other, they play-act the story of Job, the righteous man who refuses to speak against God despite terrible events that befall him and his family. As the opera progresses, they relate more of Job's tale, and the audience sees how his story parallels the family's.

The extensive research Mansfield undertook for the opera brought her to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., the Leo Baeck Institute in New York, the Jewish Museum and the Centrum Judaicum in Berlin and to countless unpublished biographies of Holocaust survivors, contemporaneous news accounts and books.

"I decided that it was very important that the piece be historically accurate," says Mansfield, who lost distant relatives to the Nazis, "so it could memorialize what happened, educate the public and oppose the revisionist historians who claim the Holocaust never happened."

What began nearly 30 years ago as a production produced at a community center has become the driving force in her life. Mansfield would like to take a year off to complete the work.

"My ultimate dream," she says, "is to have the piece performed widely, serving to educate and combat hate and bigotry of all sorts."