Jewish Berenice’s Love Denied by Titus

DRAMATICO-TRAGIQUE DESTIN D’UNE PRINCESSE JUIVE

RITA STROHL — TITUS ET BÉRÉNICE — GEORGE ONSLOW — AUDE PIVÔT — LAURENT MARTIN — 2017

Two characters, Titus and Bérénice, inspired by the poetic and dramatic genius of Jean Racine, the French playwright, are extracted from history for our meditation. Titus fell in love with Bérénice before he became emperor. He had to terminate this love affair coming from Jerusalem, Palestine, where he was the governor and general for a while when the city rebelled against the Roman Empire and tried to sever their links, seen as chains, but they failed. At first, the Jerusalem Temple was pulled down and the walls of the city were pulled down. Then, the Jews were ordered to disappear from the Middle East, the famous diaspora that some have been trying to negate for a century or so, if not more, before and after the Holocaust, the Shoah, and the Second World War by providing the Zionist movement with a new Israel carved out of Palestine with no agreement with the concerned Arab population living there. We know what happened in the following 70 years or so and is still going on.

Two instruments, a cello, and a piano for these two characters. Who is the cello? Who is the piano? No one knows and no one wants or…