Large pen-and-ink micrographics portrait of the great Yiddish actor and singer. Textual border contains names of numerous popular Yiddish songs. The portrait partially made of lyrics of further Yiddish songs.

(LEBEDEFF, AARON).

1926.

Not examined out of elaborate gilt frame

Aaron Lebedeff (1873-1960) was a talented singer and songwriter as well as one of the most popular entertainers in the Yiddish theater. The themes he often conveyed dwelt upon nostalgia for the shtetl as a generic rather than a specific locale, thereby refashioning his geographically fragmented immigrant audience into a homogeneous mass of Jews striving between their European past and their newfound American future. Lebedeff entered Jewish vaudeville when the Yiddish comedy stage was at its era of greatest popularity, with large houses, prolific composers, and a growing demand for top-rate actors. As an art form, the Yiddish theater had emerged through the efforts of Jacob Adler, Jacob Gordon, Maurice Schwartz, David Kessler, Boris Thomashevsky and others. (see http://aaronlebedeff.free.fr/corps-anglais.htm)