The Day They Buried Martin Buber (2009)

An original musical play by Yehuda Amichai – a joint show of the Revolution Orchestra and the Fringe Opera Center

This is a first-ever attempt to turn a script by Yehuda Amichai into a musical.  Few are aware that besides being a wonderful poet, Yehuda Amichai also wrote skits. “The Day They Buried Martin Buber” from 1968 is one of them.

This is the story of a couple who try in vain, after their love has died, to reconstruct the course of their romance and pinpoint the moment of its end.  However, the voices of the world around them, the details, the sights, the colors, the voices of Jerusalem and its heavy historical baggage, all these form a deluge of images and sounds that muffle the voice of the couple who seek rest in forgetting.  During the stage adaptation to a musical, the work was re-edited and some poems from Amichai’s collected works that were set to music especially for this show were interwoven with the text.  The dialogue among Amichai’s works that becomes a new creation gives new expression to the statement that the play is based on: Dialogue and Attachment as the essence of Martin Buber’s doctrine, the attachment between “I and Thou”, the dialogue that “died” the day he was buried.  This is a play about the intimacy of attention, a local-Jerusalemite text with a universal message in the language of Martin Buber’s dialogue philosophy and Amichai’s poetry.

The musical play was composed by the young pianist/composer Daniel Ran, the director and lyricist of the show was the late Yuval Zamir – actor, singer, and director, extensively experienced in music and opera, who at the time of the show’s production served as the artistic director of the Fringe Opera Center.

The musical play was performed by an orchestral ensemble and four actor-singers .  The musicians of the orchestra also play a role in the plot, singing and acting, playing the different characters that surround the couple.

Original music: Daniel Ran – Text editor & Director: Yuval Zamir