Jewish Journal: First a Book and Then a Film, ‘Awakenings’ Becomes an Opera
Cast member Adrienne Danrich and Composer Tobias Picker
Oliver Wolf Sacks (1933-2015) was a medical pioneer. A renowned physician and professor, the London-born and eventually New York-based Jewish neurologist may be best known for using levodopa on post- encephalitis lethargica patients in the Bronx caught in the “sleeping-sickness” epidemic of the 1920s.
The general public may be aware of that medical breakthrough thanks to the acclaimed 1990 film “Awakenings” starring Robin Williams as Dr. Malcolm Sayer, who is based on Sacks. Last year, composer Tobias Picker and his writer/neuro-radiologist spouse, Aryeh Lev Stollman, premiered an English language opera based on Sacks’ own 1973 bestseller of the same name at the Opera Theatre of Saint Louis.