There is a little-known history from the Holocaust that there were about 20,000 persecuted Jews in Europe who found sanctuary in China. These Jews were “paperless refugees,” many of them from middle and upper-middle class society in Germany and Austria. But overnight, they became refugees and they came to Shanghai where they were accepted.
And now, there is a musical spanning multiple genres that shines a light on the Jewish Holocaust refugees in Shanghai and their bond with Chinese musicians.
Professor Sean (Xiang) Gao, the composer, conceptualized the show in 2018.
“I visited the Shanghai Jewish Refugees Museum in 2018 and at that time, I didn’t know there’s that connection between Chinese Classical musicians and some Jewish refugees to Shanghai in the 1930s and 1940s,” Gao told the Journal. “After visiting the museum, I decided as a songwriter, composer and presenter, to create a family-friendly musical theater production featuring the stories of classical music being taught by the Jewish refugee musicians to the Chinese classical musicians with the hope that we could connect the dots between so many great musicians from China.”
Gao is a classically trained violinist originally from China, and now lives in Delaware with his family, where he is a professor at the University of Delaware School of Music.
“We started researching and working with historians, survivors,” Gao said. “I met the late Betty Grebenschikoff, who’s one of the most interviewed survivors from the Shanghai Jewish Ghetto. She wrote a memoir called ‘Once, My Name Was Sara.’ The Nazis made all the girls, changed their middle name to Sara and the boys to Israel, to later identify them.”
Grebenschikoff passed away last month at the age of 93. Gao and the “Shanghai Sonatas” production team are dedicating the show in her memory.
“Shanghai Sonatas” itself features five different genres of music, from classical music to musical theater. It has a melodic old-fashioned Broadway feel that Gao hopes to bring back to stage. The show also features Chinese traditional music that the Jewish refugees heard, as well as the Klezmer music that they brought from Eastern Europe to China. There is also fusion jazz that people heard in night clubs in Shanghai in the 1930s, which was one of the cultural epicenters that claimed the title, “the Paris of the East.” The musical captures a time in Shanghai where music was getting more attention than ever, as the city was becoming a musical melting pot. The Jewish refugees in Shanghai who were musicians had nothing left but music.
“To make a living, many Jewish refugees taught some of the lucky kids from Chinese families,” Gao said. “And these kids, many of them later became the driving force of the first generation of Chinese classical musicians.”
Diane Fisher, a co-producer of “Shanghai Sonatas,” only learned about the story of the Jewish refugees in Shanghai a year ago from Gao. But before telling the Journal about her first impressions of the story, Fisher made a point to share how she and Gao met on an airplane to China twelve years ago.
“Sean was coming down the aisle with his Stradivarius [violin] and needed a home for overhead. So I took out my overhead contents and up went the violin, and we maintained a relationship throughout all those years.”
Fisher continued, “I saw Sean’s show, and I just completely fell in love with it. And the music is, it’s very unusual that you find that was just so exciting. And of course, the story I’ve never known, and most people never know, don’t know. And it’s very impactful on many levels, including how it defined classical music throughout the world today…this has gangbuster music on all sides—everyone’s got their favorites, so there isn’t a song [in the show] you can’t love.”
The Jewish people were far from the only people who brought classical music to China, but, as Gao said, they did contribute quite a bit.
“The story is based on research and is inspired by so many memoirs written by the Jewish refugee musicians. We also have a global partner called Violins of Hope which provides instruments that survived the concentration camps, but their owners did not. So we’re giving voices to the voiceless and promoting Holocaust awareness from a brand new perspective. And then the way these London and New York based singing actors who are coming to the world premiere of our concert are a triple threat— they sing, dance and perform musical instruments.”
“Shanghai Sonatas” is guest-conducted by Dr. Noreen Green, who founded Violins for Hope. The show also has a partnership with the Shanghai Jewish Refugee Museum. “Located in the Hongkou District of Shanghai, China, [the museum] was established in 2007 with the Ohel Moshe Synagogue, one of the Jewish activity centers in Shanghai back in the early 20th century, as its core body,” according to the “Shanghai Sonatas” website. It is also a collaboration with the University of Delaware Master Players Concert Series.
The show at the Wallis is considered the world premiere but Gao and the production team are saving the fuller grand production for what they hope will be a Broadway production in the future. Still, the show at the Wallis is a concert version with a narrator to push the plot forward.
Gao said that the show is aimed at the next generation of not just musicians, but everyone who will be inspired by the story. After all, that was the mission of the late Betty Grebenschikoff, who was a volunteer consultant on the show before she passed.
“As a Holocaust Survivor and former Shanghai Jewish Refugee, I was honored to be part of the creation of ‘Shanghai Sonatas,’ the new musical, as its volunteer consultant,” Grebenschikoff wrote in a statement on the show’s website. “Professor Xiang Gao succeeded in his task of telling the still little known story of 20,000 Jewish refugees who found a haven from Nazi persecution in Shanghai in 1939. Since the story is told with music, dance and particularly violins that survived the war from Violins of Hope, it is suitable for all age groups and sends a message of hope and survival under difficult circumstances. It is particularly important today to teach the world that people of good will can and will make this a better world.”
For more information on “Shanghai Sonatas,” go to www.shanghaisonatasfoundation.org
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