About the work
Mono-opera in two parts for soprano and chamber orchestra by Grigori Samuilovich Frid, its libretto assembled almost verbatim from the diary of Anne Frank. Frid composed the work in the late 1960s; a concert premiere followed in 1972 in Moscow, and the staged premiere with orchestra took place on 8 May 1977 in Sverdlovsk (today Yekaterinburg).
Plot
In 21 episodes, the teenage Anne Frank reflects on her thoughts, fears and hopes while hiding in occupied Amsterdam. The work shows no external plot in the conventional sense, and it ends before the family's arrest comes into view.
Cultural significance
Largely overlooked in the Soviet Union at first, the mono-opera gained ground chiefly in the United States from the 1970s and has been performed regularly on German stages since the 1990s. It is among the few operas whose text consists almost entirely of a historical document.