Enhance Your Experience
Music, Reading & Resources

Opera Parallèle presents
Sophia’s Forest
Music by Lembit Beecher
Libretto by Hannah Moscovitch
Please enjoy these resources to enhance your experience of Sophia’s Forest. The opera explores the lasting effects on families of the immigrant experience, and the ways in which children use their imaginations to cope with trauma and find healing. This selection of materials from a diverse range of creators, all explore this theme in their own way.
Poetry
'Who Am I, Without Exile?' By Mahmoud Darwish
Who Am I, Without Exile?
'The Immigrant's Song' by Tishani Doshi
The Immigrant’s Song
Music
'Wie lange Noch?' by Kurt Weill
Written after Weill had settled in Paris having escaped the rising Nazi power. He finally ended up in the US and, in 1944, composed the new version of the song to be played behind enemy lines.
'Piano Concerto No.3 in E Major' by Bela Bartok
Composed in the final months of his life following his migration to the US from Hungary after WWII
'Bombs Turn into Roses' by Maya Youssef
'The war started in my homeland in 2011. From that point on making music was no longer a choice, it was a crucial means to express and come to terms with intense feelings of loss and sadness from seeing my people suffer and my homeland destroyed.'
'Nostalgia' - by Ma Sicong from 'Inner Mongolia Suite'
Panel conversation
OP partnered with Grace Cathedral to present this panel conversation exploring the lasting effects of the immigrant experience on families and the ways children use their imaginations to cope with trauma and find healing. Featuring composer Lembit Beecher, Neuroscientist and Director Indre Viskontas, and refugee advocate and leader in the Afghan diaspora Malaak Malikyar Sills via the Islamic Networks Group – ING, in conversation with Dean Malcolm Clemens Young.
Resource organizations
Composer created instruments & Sound Art

SF CAIRS
The SF Refugee, Assylee, & Immigrant Forum
- Click for more information.

Jewish Family & Community Services East Bay
Wide ranging support services for Refugees & Immigrants in the East Bay
- Click for more information.

The LGBT Asylum Project
The LGBT Asylum Project is the only San Francisco nonprofit organization exclusively dedicated to providing accessible legal representation for LGBT asylum seekers who are fleeing persecution due to their sexual orientation, gender identity and/or HIV status.
- Click for more information.

Catholic Charities SF
Center for Immigration Legal & Support Services
- Click for more information.
Books For ADults
Books for All Ages
Non-Fiction Books

The Joy Luck Club
by Amy Tan
- Click for more information.

Americanah
by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
- Click for more information.
Malala's Magic Pencil
by Malala Yousafzai
- Click to hear the book read aloud.

American Street
by Ibi Zoboi
- Click for more information.

The Sympathizer
by Viet Thanh Nguyen
- Click for more information.

Once I Was You
by María Hinojosa
- Click for more information.