CHOPIN’S HEART is a historical fiction that uses real and imagined characters to create a vivid picture of a time and place. This comic, biting, and tragic musical gives us a glimpse into the lost world of pre-World War II Warsaw. The vibrant, cosmopolitan city that had a cabaret scene rivaling Berlin and Paris was utterly destroyed in 1939 and is gone forever. In 1964 London, survivor Frederic Sercki is a recluse haunted by the past. Fellow cabaret artist and survivor Zozo Terné attempts to prod his memory about the cabaret—Serce Chopina, or Chopin’s Heart—that he started just a few months before the Nazi and Soviet invasion of Poland.
But Frederic, who hides a secret from his old friend Zozo, does not wish to delve into his memories. It is not until the ghost of the internationally famous cabaret chanteuse Hanka Ordonówna shows up, along with other long-dead figures from his past, that both 1939 and 1964 come alive and commingle, creating the possibility of catharsis for Frederic.
CHARACTERS:
>Hanka Ordonówna, Poland’s brightest cabaret star, she has toured Europe and America, performed on the legitimate stage, and even made a few movies. In the 1930s, she married a wealthy member of the Polish nobility.
>Ferenc Járosy, actor, director, singer. In the past, he was Hanka’s lover; when she dumped him, he became Zozo’s lover. Almost two decades later, he still carries a torch for Hanka. An Austrian Jew, he is in grave danger in 1939.
>Zosia Terné, nicknamed Zozo, left for Paris after her relationship with Járosy ended, and became a star. Yet she, too, carries a torch -- for Járosy. Zozo’s mother is Jewish; her legal position is as precarious as Járosy’s.
>Frederic Sercki is the composer and music director who was the heart of the first cabaret in which they all worked. Everyone is counting on him to pen new hit songs. Will Poland’s increasingly authoritarian government throw him into an internment camp because of his sexual orientation or because of his penchant for creating bitingly political material?
>Marek Pustaki is a handsome lieutenant in the Polish Army and, though no one knows it, Frederic’s lover. If the Polish Army were to discover his sexual orientation, he would be court-martialed and sent to the Polish work camps.
>Prince Michal Tyszkiewicz, a successful songwriter, government minister, and a member of one of Poland’s oldest and most respected families, is Hanka’s husband. He is bankrolling the new cabaret.
CHOPIN’S HEART: where the past, present, and future of 1939 Europe collide.
