This work is based entirely on the Death House Letters of Julius & Ethel. It is scored for baritone (or tenor), soprano, and piano or orchestra, with optional mixed chorus. It is recorded with all those forces on LP, on the Opus One label, and is available, also on CD, from Leonard Lehrman or the NCRRC.

THE PERFORMANCE HISTORY
An excerpt, movement 2 (of 12), "The Shofar," was first performed by soprano Helene Williams with composer Leonard Lehrman at the piano for the NCRRC at NYU Law School, June 19, 1987.

Commissioned by the NCRRC and the Prof. Edgar H. Lehrman Memorial Foundation for Ethics, Religion, Science and the Arts, the first complete performance of the entire work, co-sponsored by Meet The Composer, took place at The Bryant Library in Roslyn, NY June 14, 1988, sung by baritone Peter Schlosser, soprano Helene Williams, with composer Leonard Lehrman at the piano.

The first performance with chorus, and the same soloists, conducted from the piano by the composer, took place at the Community Church of NY June 19, 1988. Jonathan Bennett reported in The Guardian: "The audience was moved to tears."

The first performance with orchestra and chorus, and the same soloists, conducted by the composer, took place at Marymount Manhattan Theatre June 11, 1989, at which time the Opus One LP recording of the work, with the same soloists and the Metropolitan Philharmonic Chorus and Orchestra, conducted by the composer, was released.

Other complete performances with chorus took place on WQXR's "The Listening Room," Dec. 8, 1988--at which Robert Sherman called the piece "a stirring, poignant and important work that deserves widespread attention and many more performances"--at Plandome Unitarian Church (with Ronald Edwards substituting for Peter Schlosser) June 19, 1993, and with Gregory Mercer in the role of Julius June 15, 2003 at the Puffin Cultural Forum in Teaneck, NJ and again June18, 2003 at Stephen Wise Free Synagogue. Other complete performances with just soloists and piano took place at the Museum of Fine Art in Roslyn (co-sponsored by Nassau County) Oct. 6, 1988, Community Church of Boston Dec. 11, 1988, at a WESPAC meeting in Ardsley, NY Dec. 22, 1988.

Excerpts have also been performed Mar. 6, 1988 at two different concerts in Manhattan; June 12, 1989 at the Time-Life Building for the National Council of Women; June 14, 1989 with chorus at Weill Recital Hall for Ezrath Nashim; Aug. 20, 1989 at Temple Sinai of Roslyn, NY; Oct. 7, 1996 sponsored by The Long Island Composers Alliance at Adelphi University; and June 19, 1997 at Stephen Wise Free Synagogue.
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THE OPERA JOURNAL
29:1 Mar. 1996 pp. 26-46 [EXCERPT]
Transcript of the Symposium on Marc Blitzstein's Unfinished Opera SACCO AND VANZETTI (originally commissioned by the Ford Foundation and optioned by the Metropolitan Opera) presented at the National Opera Association Convention Royal Sonesta Hotel, Cambridge, Massachusetts December 1, 1995 [editing of transcript completed Jan. 15, 1996] Moderator: Dr. Leonard J. Lehrman.

LEHRMAN: I'd like to mention the Opus One LP of my Rosenberg Cantata, [WE ARE INNOCENT] especially since the Rosenberg case has come up several times. This is relevant because
a) Blitzstein was thinking of the Rosenbergs while he was writing SACCO AND VANZETTI, and 
b) the second act was conceived as largely a series of soliloquies based on Sacco's and Vanzetti's letters, which I got to see some of at the Boston Public Library thanks to Bob D'Attilio. This is a cantata that I wrote a couple of years ago based on the letters of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, which is in a sense going to be a prototype for that second act structure with the letters of Sacco and Vanzetti. I might mention that John Corigliano told me that he had been thinking for years of writing a work on the letters of the Rosenbergs, but he said he could never find anybody to commission it!
 
 

Excerpt from an article written for and originally published in 
THE FORWARD. 

"The Sacco-Vanzetti case united the liberals," wrote David Riesman in the 1960s. "The Rosenberg case divided them."
         When Marc Blitzstein began writing his magnum opus, the three-act opera, SACCO AND VANZETTI, commissioned by the Ford Foundation and optioned by the Metropolitan Opera in 1960, he was thinking of the Rosenbergs. His sister, Josephine Davis, told me that, when I first met her and looked at his unfinished works in 1970, six years after his death.
          Both cases had provoked a worldwide outcry at the injustice of executing people for crimes they had not committed: robbery and murder in the 1920s case of Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti; stealing the "secret" of the atom bomb in the 1950s case of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg.
         . . . I was intrigued, especially when I found that Blitzstein, who Aaron Copland and Leonard Bernstein said had virtually invented American opera, had been wrestling with much the same musical language as I: finding the right balance, appropriate to the text set, between simple melody and sophisticated harmony, modal color and serial technique, heartfelt vocal expression and complex contrapuntal textures. Meetings with Leonard Bernstein and others encouraged me, as I analyzed the work with Blitzstein's teacher and mine—Nadia Boulanger—and translated and directed plays by his collaborators, Bertolt Brecht, Sean O'Casey, and Bernard Malamud.
         . . . Having left academia for the Met, and now unable to return, I found employment in Europe--Heidelberg, Augsburg, Basel, Vienna, two years in Bremerhaven, and three in Berlin, where I founded the Jewish Music Theater of that city and produced a radio program for Blitzstein's 80th birthday, in 1985.
          Later that year, though, re-encountering Leonard Bernstein, I was queried by the maestro: "Where have you been!?" He had apparently been re-considering (I just learned at the Library of Congress last month) completing "Sacco" himself and, finding it "too fragmentary," had attempted to persuade the young composer Daron Hagen to try.
          . . . Returning to the States in 1986, I composed my Rosenberg Cantata, "WE ARE INNOCENT," based on the letters of Julius & Ethel, conducted several performances of it and recorded it on Opus One with the Metropolitan Philharmonic Chorus and Orchestra. I then organized and recorded "A Blitzstein Cabaret," including an aria from "Sacco."
          . . . When I spoke to Governor Dukakis about it, telling him of my cantata on the Rosenbergs and our hope that had he been elected president in 1988 he would have pardoned them, he said: "You're a fighter for all the good causes!"