At a time when immigration remains a divisive issue, it’s instructive to look back to political cartoons of the 19th and early 20th centuries, when bomb-toting Bolsheviks seemed poised to take down our democracy, the Chinese were inscrutable back-stabbers, the Jews were bearers of poverty and disease, and the Irish were simian-faced hooligans and drunks. Anxiety about outsiders has always been with us, yet somehow we got over each successive alien group, and the country has plugged along just fine.
This Sunday night on “The Lost Chord,” we’ll gain a little perspective, courtesy of composer Peter Boyer. From 1892 to 1954, more than 12 million immigrants passed through Ellis Island in search of a better life. More than 40 percent of the U.S. population – over 100 million Americans – can trace their roots to someone who entered this country along that route.
Boyer’s “Ellis Island: The Dream of America” incorporates texts from testimonials archived as part of the Ellis Island Oral History Project. These are real words of real people telling their own stories. The work is performed by actors, rather than speakers or narrators, who deliver their monologues in the first person. In a powerful epilogue, each of them comes together to recite a stanza from Emma Lazarus’ poem, “The New Colossus.” It’s so effective – and affecting – I get a little choked up just thinking about it.
You will, too, when you join me for “Spirits of Independence,” this Sunday night at 10:00 EDT, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.
