Award-winning New York Post journalist Isabel Vincent is the featured speaker at the next Friday Night Dialogues. She’ll talk about her most recent book, “Overture of Hope: Two Sisters’ Daring Plan that Saved Opera’s Jewish Stars from the Third Reich.”
The talk is Friday, June 2, at 7 PM in the Shelter Island Public Library’s lower-level Community Room. There is no charge for admission, but donations are welcome.
Imagine two British 20-something sisters scrimping and saving their typist wages to finance tickets for a week of Royal Albert Hall concerts by famed soprano Amelita Galli-Curci. First, they find themselves invited by said diva to visit America, where they become media darlings — erstwhile influencers of the late 1920s and early 30s.
From there, the story only grows more intriguing as the sisters follow their operatic passion to Germany, where Jewish performers face increasing danger from the Third Reich. The pair of unlikely heroines take it upon themselves to rescue as many stars as possible, often transporting them and their possessions in plain sight of Hitler’s henchmen.
The incredible saga — part fandom exploit, part espionage dossier, with a large dash of spinster ‘can-do’ spirit — captured Vincent’s attention.
“I was convinced the Cook sisters must have been spies,” she says in the introduction. “But as I delved deeper into their lives and spoke to surviving friends and even an old schoolmate, I came to realize that Ida and Louise had most likely acted on their own.”
Ida herself perhaps explained it best: “We were simply moved by a sense of furious revolt against the brutality and injustice of it all and were willing to help any deserving case brought to our notice, to the limit of our small capacities.”
Don’t miss the chance to spend an hour at the library with Vincent, author of seven books, who is not only a fastidious researcher and seasoned writer but also a dynamic speaker. If you love drama and suspense, courage and ingenuity, you will relish every moment of this captivating story.
And while at the library, check out a copy of “Overture of Hope.” Opera legend and 17-time Grammy Award winner Renee Fleming describes it as “a riveting, improbable, uplifting tale, made all the more exciting because it really happened!” It will start your summer reading off right.
Follow this link to register on the library’s website. Questions? Contact Jessica Montgomery at jmontgomery@silibrary.org or 631-749-0042.
Next Up: On June 9, at 7 PM, the library will host the Annual Richard Varney Memorial Poetry Reading, organized by Shelter Island poet Virginia Walker
