Entertainment beca4 ve' A Faraway World rtainment: Wednes*y, Friday, Saturday 1-1ours: Tuesday-Thursilay 5:30 - 9:30 Friday & Saturday 5:30-10:30 Sunday 12:00-9:30 (Sunday brunch from 12-3) 1.1V 4dee C ' / t &kiwi& 17546 Woodward Ave. (2 blocks north of McNichols) Detroit (313) 865-0331 Enter rear • Valet parking Since /985 Prime rilet Mignon Clic ker or „Salmon with choice of tetaki, spicy tvigald, garlic, chili mayo or mustarci clipping sauce 5urno-51ze 5hrimp Tempura Alaskan 1 „Salad King Crab 20 Kinds of Noodle Soups Bring tour of your friends and one dinner is complimentary* Private Room/Catering/Delivery Restriretwa, apply 2000 Town Center, Suite 98 10'/2 Mile on Evergreen Road (248) 358-1911 http://www.musashi-intl.com i340 94o www.detroitjewishnews.com 8/ 2 2002 80 Find out before your mother! The award-winning composer of Broadway's `Metamorphoses" is haunted by his Jewish roots. RUTH E. GRUBER Jewish Telegraphic Agency gone through a lot of metamorphoses." These changes, in fact, trace a road map of the complex history of Jews in Europe and their fate. At the outbreak of World War II, they bought a house at Arcisate. 'All the family moved out here to Arcisate from Milan," Schwarz said. "They also took in other people, such as an anti-fascist partisan fighter and his wife. "They used Arcisate as a refuge, but also as a staging point for trying to go to Switzerland, particularly after the Germans occupied northern Italy in 1943," he says. Schwarz's grandparents tried to make it on foot to Switzerland, but were dis- covered. Despairing, his grandfather n a song about Italy that appears on his recent CD, Home, the American-born com- From Italy To America poser and songwriter Willy Schwarz writes about the final resting Schwarz's father was an Italian Jew place of his grandparents and other from Milan whose mother was a relatives. member of the Rothschild family in "In a little cemetery in the hills Germany, and Schwarz's own mother above Milano/ Sipping grappa, sharing also came from Germany. gossip/All my ancestors are there/ His grandfather, who is buried in And they argue about the family just the Arcisate cemetery, was, Schwarz like when they were alive." says, "a typical assimilated Italian Jew The cemetery he sings about is in Arcisate, a historic village in the province of Varese, near the Swiss border. It's a place that casts a huge shadow on Schwarz's life and work. The composer won this year's prestigious Drama Desk Award in May for his music for the hit Broadway drama Metamorphoses, an evocation of the ancient Roman poet Ovid's writings. Metamorphoses also tied for the Drama Desk honor for best new play and won a Tony Award for best director in June for its director/play- wright Mary Zimmerman. Schwarz's soundtrack for the show is an evocative mix of ethnic influences, combin- Willy Schwarz visits the grave in Arcisate, Italy, of his great-aunt Lina Schwarz, who was a ing the voices of more than a score of instruments — from well-known writer and activist. an accordion to a conch shell, from conventional key- boards to the tabla, ocarina and oud — a furrier who sold furs to the La committed suicide by throwing himself — most of which Schwarz plays him- Scala opera crowd and who knew a lot across a railroad track. self. of musicians." "This put everyone else at risk," A few weeks after winning the In the early part of the 20th century, Schwarz said. "My grandmother was award, the composer revisited the Schwarz's grandfather's sister Lina taken in and sheltered by a convent, but Arcisate cemetery, where he spoke became celebrated-in Italy as a poet she then converted to Catholicism." about the compelling influence his and writer of children's books. His grandparents on his mother's family's European Jewish experience of She also became a founder of the side fled Berlin in the 1930s and made assimilation, persecution and immigra- Italian branch of the Anthroposophist it to the United States, where they set- tion has had on his work. movement, an esoteric spiritual move- tled in Chicago. "I feel very attached to this place. It ment founded by the Austrian Rudolf Schwarz's- parents, meanwhile, man- is the patria — the homeland," said Steiner, whose members carried out aged to sail for America in February Schwarz, 53, a wiry man with a bushy experimental work in education and 1940 on the last trans-Atlantic passen- mustache and gray hair. "I feel that my agriculture. ger ship to leave Genoa, bringing with roots come through, somehow, in Other family members also came them their baby daughter, the first of whatever music I write. My family has under the influence of Anthroposophy. their seven children.