Characters and performers
Leah
Ballet in one act
to music by Leonard Bernstein
Synopsis
Leah and Hannan were pledged to each other by their fathers and later fell in love, only to be separated when the girl’s father arranged for her to marry a wealthy suitor.
Hannan, an impoverished rabbinical student, desperately turns to the Kabbalah to help him win Leah for himself, and as a last resort, he invokes the powerful but dangerous other-worldly formulae of ancient usage. At the supreme moment of discovering the secret words that unleash the dark forces, he is overwhelmed by the fierce ecstasy of the enlightenment and dies.
At Leah’s wedding, Hannan returns as a dybbuk (supernatural spirit) and, claiming her as his rightful bride, clings ferociously to his beloved. After the dybbuk is exorcized by the elders, Leah, unable to exist without her predestined bridegroom, leaves her life to join him in obliv-ion.