Old Wicked Songs

About the show

In Vienna in 1986, burned-out American pianist Stephen Hoffman is sent to study with Professor Josef Mashkan, first learning to sing Schumann’s Dichterliebe. Mashkan’s anti-Jewish insults strain their relationship until Hoffman’s visit to Dachau prompts him to tell the professor what he experienced there. The lessons uncover Mashkan’s own Holocaust-survivor past and connect sadness and joy in the poetry and music they study.