Holocaust victim’s opera stored for years in trunk gets premiere at last

Grete Minde was a side project for Eugen Engel, a textile tradesman by day, whose daughter escaped to US

An opera score retrieved from a San Francisco basement has had its world premiere in a German theatre, exuberantly brought to life by more than 150 musicians and performers nearly 80 years after its composer was murdered by the Nazis.

Grete Minde, a late-romantic opera of 1920s jazz-inspired melodies and large orchestral sounds, was the work of Eugen Engel, a Berlin-based Jewish textile tradesman in his day job, who gave his handwritten sheet music to his daughter for safekeeping when she escaped to the United States in 1941.