By 2001, Howard Reich found himself in plenty of strange situations in his line of work. As an arts reporter for the Tribune, it came with the territory.
But this, even by his standards, was unusual. He’d been pounding on the door of a modest house in Lyons, Illinois, for 20 minutes, his knocks drowned out by heavy metal blasting inside. Through genealogy research and his own gumshoe reporting, Reich had reason to believe that, on the other side of the beat-up door — probably whoever was listening to that thrashing music— was the heir to an art fortune worth millions.
He was right. Tattooed and built like a tank, Gerald “Mac” McDonald was critically ill and living in poverty, one of countless Vietnam vets who fell through the cracks after returning from the war. Unbeknownst to McDonald, however, he was Jewish — and not only Jewish, but the descendant of Emil Freund, a wealthy Czech insurance director. Freund died at the Lodz ghetto in Poland in 1942, but his modern art collection survived, stowed away in a facility owned by the National Gallery in Prague decades after being seized by the Nazis.
Gerald McDonald arrives by train in the early evening at Lodz, Poland on July 1, 2002. McDonald retraced the steps of his great-great uncle Emil Freund, who was the owner of a vast art collection taken by the Nazis. (John Smierciak/Chicago Tribune).
McDonald’s journey to Prague to glimpse the artwork, alongside Reich and then-Tribune photographer John Smierciak, became a two-part Tribune feature in 2002, “Mac’s Journey.” That journey reaches new audiences around the country this month — including in Chicago — through a one-act opera adaptation by composer Jake Heggie and librettist Gene Scheer, titled “Before It All Goes Dark.” The opera was commissioned and produced by the Seattle-based performing arts organization Music of Remembrance. Chicago Opera Theater is co-producing the local production.
Music of Remembrance was founded in 1998 by pianist Mina Miller with a focus on Holocaust stories and education. (Miller, like Reich, is the child of Holocaust survivors.) These days, Music of Remembrance’s purview is broader. Its productions urge audiences to apply lessons learned from the Holocaust — or, as is too often the case, ignored — to other human rights catastrophes. Recent commissions have addressed Japanese American internment (“Gaman”), the Armenian genocide (“Return to Amasia”) and detention camps at the U.S.-Mexico border (“Tres minutos”).
“I grew up with a visceral awareness of the power of memory, and the vastness of stories that need to be told,” Miller says.
Heggie and Scheer — strong contenders for the most celebrated composer–librettist team working today — first worked with Music of Remembrance on the 2007 opera “For a Look or a Touch” about two gay Jewish teenagers whose youthful courtship was disrupted, fatally, by the Nazi regime. Four other operas and song cycles followed.
Miller reached out to Heggie and Scheer about another commission timed to the organization’s 25th anniversary. Heggie was still searching for a subject in early 2021, when Reich announced his retirement from the Tribune. Heggie invited him to dinner later that year and mentioned the Music of Remembrance commission. While Reich relayed the saga behind “Mac’s Journey,” Heggie says he “felt the hairs of (his) arms standing on end.”
“I got this rush — I felt music,” Heggie says. “It was a different perspective on the Holocaust from anything we’d considered.”
Gerald McDonald, left, and Michaela Hajkova, curator of the Jewish Museum in Prague, look over the painting “Head of a young woman” by Andre Derain on July 1, 2002. (John Smierciak/Chicago Tribune)
Scheer, the librettist, dramatizes the Tribune stories slightly. The tragic denouement of McDonald’s journey — both its real and fictionalized versions — is that the Czech government invented an eleventh-hour legal cover to claim Freund’s artworks as “national cultural treasures” once McDonald had been identified as the heir, preventing him from taking the art home. The real-life McDonald knew this before setting off for Europe; in “Before It All Goes Dark,” he finds out only after making the voyage. Reich and Smierciak are also absent from the stage action.
“I think Howard understood that what I’m doing is very, very different than what he did. He was really writing a newspaper piece, telling the story. But we’re trying to write an opera, which is anchored in emotion,” Scheer says.
Reich went on to report on several looted art cases for the Tribune. Most of those cases failed; echoing McDonald’s case, European countries sometimes hurriedly changed their laws to prevent the art’s return. Government payouts equivalent to the value of the works were, at the time, rare but more common than restitution.
Former Chicago Tribune critic Howard Reich shows copies of the 2001-2002 Tribune series about a Vietnam War vet named Gerald McDonald who learned he was heir to an art fortune looted by the Nazis, May 2, 2024. (Chris Sweda/Chicago Tribune)
That’s gradually changing as attitudes around looted artwork have evolved. The Art Institute of Chicago is the most prominent local institution to face restitution claims, including for antiquities from Nepal. Just last month, the Art Institute filed a lengthy rebuttal in New York courts to defend its ownership of a watercolor by Austrian Expressionist painter Egon Schiele. The painting was one of eight Schieles owned by Fritz Grünbaum, a Jewish cabaret star, that ended up in public and private collections in the United States years after Grünbaum was incarcerated at the Dachau concentration camp in 1938. He died there in 1941.
McDonald never lived to see penny or painting of his inheritance. He died in 2005 at 55. He is survived by two children, one of whom lives locally and plans to attend the production.
“What would Mac think? We don’t know. Here’s this heavy metal guy who’s going to be the lead figure in an opera,” Reich says. “But if I had to guess, I think Mac would have loved this. If he’d embraced us doing all those Tribune stories, he would have been there.”
Hannah Edgar is a freelance critic.
The Rubin Institute for Music Criticism helps fund our classical music coverage. The Chicago Tribune maintains editorial control over assignments and content.
“Before It All Goes Dark” will be performed 7:30 p.m. May 25 and 3 p.m. May 26 at the Studebaker Theater, 410 S. Michigan Ave.; tickets $45-$80 and more information at chicagooperatheater.org
