The legendary defense of the desert fortress Masada by a small band of Jewish Zealots against a massive Roman army inspires awe nearly 2,000 years after the historical occurrence. Marvin David Levy's dramatic retelling of the Masada story, originally written for the great operatic tenor and cantor Richard Tucker, here receives its world-premiere recording. Also recorded by the Milken Archive for the first time is Levy's haunting Canto de los Marranos, a dramatic scene for soprano (in four languages: English, Ladino, Hebrew, and Latin) that reveals the passions and conflicts of the 15th-century Spanish Jews who outwardly converted to Christianity while secretly practicing their Jewish beliefs "under penalty of death."

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