In 1959, composer Marc Blitzstein began work on what he expected to be his magnum opus: a three-act opera based on the case of Sacco and Vanzetti.[1] The Metropolitan Opera commissioned the opera with a Ford Foundation grant, but the production was canceled in September 1960 by the National Federation of Music Clubs for Blitzstein's membership in the Communist Party throughout the 1940s.[2] The opera remained unfinished upon Blitzstein's murder in 1964. Another composer, Leonard Lehrman, an associate of Blitzstein, finished the work almost four decades later as it premiered in 2001 in Connecticut.[1]
^Grippo, Theodore W. (2011). With Malice Aforethought: The Execution of Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti. iUniverse. p. 252. ISBN978-1-4502-8067-9.
Gordon, Eric A. (1989). Mark the Music: The Life and Work of Marc Blitzstein. St. Martin's Press. ISBN0-312-02607-2.
Pollack, Howard (2012). "The Unfinished Operas". Marc Blitzstein: His Life, His Work, His World. Oxford University Press. pp. 474–494. ISBN978-0-19-979159-0.
