Between the Hazzan’s Pulpit and the Operatic Stage: A Biography of the Bimusical Singer Yitzhak Man
Between the Hazzan’s Pulpit and the Operatic Stage: A Biography of the Bimusical Singer Yitzhak Man

Summary/Abstract: This study presents a biography and discography of Yitzhak Man (1885, Działoszyce – 1963, Tel Aviv), a remarkable figure of the interwar Czechoslovak cantorate. The Polish operatic singer Ignacy Mann, who gave up his fifteen- -year stage career to become Chief Cantor of the Great Synagogue in Brno (1927–1939), while continuing a professional concert career, had to escape to Mandatory Palestine in 1939. He later became known as Yitzhak Man, Chief Cantor of the Central Synagogue in Haifa (1944–1955). This biography places a special focus on his cantorial service in Brno, Moravia (1927–1939) as an unexplored part of Czechoslovakia’s Jewish history at the same time discussing Man as a case in point for a small cohort of cantors whose careers spanned a broad spectrum of music activities. It shows Man as traversing two distinct music cultures while utilizing the ethnomusicological concept of bimusicality.

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