FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
April 29, 2005

CONTACT: Cathy Lesser Mansfield, (515) 2 71-2076, cathy.mansfield@drake.edu
Lisa Lacher, (515) 271-3119, lisa.lacher@drake.edu

DRAKE LAW PROFESSOR'S OPERA TO BE PERFORMED MAY 7

Drake University law professor Cathy Lesser Mansfield is composing a musical drama that superimposes the story of Job over the tale of a Jewish family caught up in Hitler's Germany.

The completed portions of "The Sparks Fly Upward" will be performed on Saturday, May 7, by the City Opera Company of the Quad Cities as a part of a series of Holocaust-related events sponsored by the Quad Cities Jewish Federation. The performance will begin at 8 p.m. in the Moline High School Auditorium, 3600 Avenue of the Cities, Moline, Ill. Tickets, available at the door, are $10 for adults and admission is free for all students.

The performance is part of a community-wide project titled "Beyond the Holocaust: Lessons for Today" taking place in the Quad Cities from April through June. The project encompasses a national traveling exhibit about Anne Frank, as well as a variety of performing arts events and educational opportunities. "Beyond the Holocaust," which marks the 60th anniversary of the end of World War II and the liberation of concentration camps, addresses issues of prejudice and intolerance and promotes understanding among all faiths and races.

"The Sparks Fly Upward" will be performed with a full orchestra, thanks to a $20,000 grant from the Scott County Regional Authority to the City Opera Co. Ron May, director of the City Opera Co., will conduct. Seven of the lead roles are being played by members of the Drake community, including five music students, a recent graduate and Leanne Freeman-Miller, associate professor of voice at Drake.

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 her interest in the arts predates her law career. The Cleveland native wrote the precursor of “Sparks” in 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 decided to pursue a career in law while maintaining her interest in music.

She began working on the opera again in 1994 and has continued to expand and it refine it since then. Last April, Mansfield conducted a performance of the work in progress at Drake with local performers, a computer-generated orchestra and slides of the period. Since then, she's composed three additional songs and added narration to explain more of Holocaust history.

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 is undertaking for the opera has already 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," said Mansfield, " so it could memorialize what happened, educate the public and oppose the revisionist historians who claim the Holocaust never happened. My ultimate dream is to have the piece performed widely, serving to educate and combat hate and bigotry of all sorts.”

For more information on the May 7 performance in Moline, visit www.visitquadcities.com/2004/for_visitors/frank.html.

- 30 -