Emerson McAlister — ANOTHER SUNRISE

Drawing on the life story of Polish Resistance member and hidden Jew, Krystyna Żywulska (1914-1993), ‘Another Sunrise’ by Jake Heggie (with a libretto by Gene Scheer) explores the unimaginable choices Zywulska made in order to survive, to see another sunrise.  

Born Sonia Landau, Żywulska had a number of remarkable experiences during the Nazi occupation of Poland. After boldly walking out of the Jewish ghetto in Warsaw in broad daylight in 1942, she reinvented herself as a gentile, joining the Polish resistance. Captured by the Gestapo and sent to Auschwitz-Birkenau as a political prisoner, she hid the fact that she was Jewish for her entire incarceration in the concentration camp, where her poems and songs became camp anthems of resistance. This work, a dramatic scene for solo soprano, focuses on Żywulska later in life. She has been asked by an interviewer to record her memories of Auschwitz. However, facing the tape recorder during a sleepless night, she finds it impossible to tell her story. 

Emerson McAlister (They/Them)
A native of New Orleans, McAlister grew up in a mostly secular family with a Jewish mother and Methodist father. They moved to San Francisco to enroll at SFCM in 2020, while the pandemic was still raging, and connected with the Bay Area Jewish community through Congregation Sha’ar Zahav. A 2022 MFA graduate of SFCM’s opera program, McAlister has cultivated their passion for opera. They’re also dedicated to LGBTQ+ rights, disability rights and Jewish representation, identifying as part of all those communities. 

Jake Heggie, Composer
Born in West Palm Beach, raised in Ohio and California, Jake Heggie has made his home in San Francisco since 1993. Heggie’s most popular operas include the acclaimed Moby-Dick (libretto: Gene Scheer), The End of the Affair (libretto: Heather McDonald), and Dead Man Walking (libretto: Terrence McNally). He has written more than 200 songs, as well as orchestral, choral and chamber music. Heggie has had his operas performed internationally on five continents, and by more than a dozen American opera companies, including: San Francisco Opera, New York City Opera, Houston Grand Opera, The Dallas Opera, Seattle Opera, Ft. Worth Opera, Cincinnati Opera, Pittsburgh Opera, Austin Lyric Opera, and Madison Opera.