O Lungo Drom (The Long Road) Oratorio

April 5 | 8:15pm

O Lungo Drom (“The Long Road” in Romanes) (2022) is an oratorio that tracks the history of the Roma and Sinti (a subgroup of the Romani people found mostly in Germany) through the words of Sinti/Roma poets and writers themselves. This oratorio contains many significant ‘firsts’: it is the first oratorio on a Romani subject, the first that sets multiple texts by Romani authors themselves (not by non-Roma writers looking in from the ‘outside’), and the first to be set to music by a Rom. O Lungo Drom integrates texts from thirteen different poets from thirteen different Roma/Sinti authors in ten languages and Romanes dialects, organized in a three-part narrative: I. Ascent – II. Nadir – III. Vista. Along with a Danse Macabre, Litany and echoes of Lili Marleen from Auschwitz, these voices combine to pave and express worlds of melancholy, grief, nostalgia, and exultation through rhapsodic, bittersweet, elegiac and introspective lyricism. In their shared, deep commitment to social justice, the sister Jesuit universities of the College of the Holy Cross and Boston College will host joint U.S. premières of the oratorio on April 5 and 6, respectively.

The Department of Music