Congregation Shaar Hashomayim · May 2020 —
When the curtain fell on the rest of the world, the curtain rose on A Night @ the Opera!!
It began in May 2020, the second month of the Covid shutdown, because there was nothing else to do on a Thursday night.
The premise was simple enough: a world where singing had become the most dangerous activity, a cantor with an encyclopedic knowledge of opera, an audience with nowhere to go.
Along the way the audience grew from thirty to more than five hundred, and the guests came: singers, scholars, producers, writers.
The evenings sort six ways: by voice, by holiday, by a single opera taken sometimes an act at a time, by whatever the world was doing that week, by a guest in conversation — and by categories that exist nowhere else in the operatic literature: animals, weather, doctors, royalty, best endings, and opera sung in the wrong language. The organizing principle is that there isn't one — it just needs to be fun!
Most Zoom programmes launched in 2020 were finished by 2022. This one is going strong into its seventh year.
21 May 2020
67 nights
66 recorded
6 years
30 → 500+ audience
30
May 2020 · first episode
300
March 2021
500+
Winter 2022
CBC Radio 2 · September 2010
Before the series
The series has an origin, and it is on tape. Ten years before the first Thursday night, Bill Richardson brought Saturday Afternoon at the Opera to Montreal for an afternoon — first to the house, over the opera autographs inherited from Rabbi Mark Loeb of Baltimore, and then to the sanctuary. Ponselle as Norma; a Metropolitan Opera cast page signed by Ponselle, Serafin, Martinelli and Pinza; Hermann Jadlowker, who sang at the Met and was chief cantor of Riga, and had the coloratura for both.
The rest is the conversation this page never otherwise explains: Carmen at six at the Lyric Opera in Boston, under Sarah Caldwell, which struck him mostly as people screaming in a language he could not follow; his mother’s records, taken off the shelf a decade later; voice lessons at George Washington begun so that he would understand what he was listening to; a year of rabbinical school during which one half of his life kept speaking to him and the other spoke less and less.
“A leading tenor has to convince me that he’s in love, has to convince me that he’s going to war, has to convince me that he’s trying to save this girl from this evil villain — usually a baritone. In the same way, I need to be convincing. My job, more than anything, is to serve the text.”
“I know that I’m not the proverbial fourth tenor, and that’s fine with me.”
Part one · at home, over the autographs · 5 minutes
Part two · in the sanctuary · 14 minutes
Who has come
Guests
Barry Tucker
President of the Richard Tucker Music Foundation, on his father — the Metropolitan Opera star who never stopped serving as a cantor.
June 2020
Joseph Kaiser
Tenor, and once a member of the Shaar Hashomayim choir, now High Holy Day cantor at Temple Emanu-El-Beth Sholom — and the reason there are anthems in this story at all.
July 2020
Leah Edwards & Dimitri Pittas
Soprano and tenor, and married. Edwards has twice sung in Shaar concerts, Pittas once. During the pandemic they founded an opera company in Charleston.
July 2020
Aryeh Nussbaum Cohen
Countertenor — and cantor at his hometown synagogue on the High Holy Days. The same two lives, in one voice an octave higher.
November 2020
Martha de Francisco
Record producer; McGill Professor. Produced the Shaar Hashomayim recordings.
December 2020
Susan Pinker
Psychologist and author of The Village Effect.
December 2020
Michael Benchetrit
Artist manager.
February 2021
Leon Wieseltier
Writer; editor of Liberties; dear friend of Leonard Cohen.
March 2021
Russell Braun
Canadian baritone. Sang the title role in Elijah at The Shaar in 2017.
June 2021
Rabbi David Wolpe
Rabbi Emeritus of Sinai Temple, Los Angeles; author; invited Zelermyer to lecture at Harvard Divinity School.
March 2022
Robert Baker
Tenor, and for many years a professor of music at The George Washington University. Zelermyer's first voice teacher — and still his voice teacher.
May 2022
Steven Pinker
Cognitive psychologist and author; Johnstone Professor, Harvard.
June 2022
Most of the people on this list appear elsewhere on this site — in a concert, on a record, or at the start of something. They are not just guests, they are each part of the story.
Posters and title cards
On the bill
With Rabbi David Wolpe, Max Webb Senior Rabbi of Sinai Temple, Los Angeles.
2 March 2022 — Episode 34.
The holding card, counting down.
13 January 2022 — Episode 31. The night the 500-seat Zoom sold out.
Steven Pinker in conversation.
23 June 2022 — Episode 39.
Every evening, in order
The index
A complete list. Recordings are held by the congregation; individual episodes may be viewed on request.
2020
2021
2022
2023
2024
2025
2026