Two of the 20th century’s most esteemed Jewish literary figures are represented among these operas: Bernard Malamud, whose Jewish stories are an acknowledged part of American literature, and Nobel laureate Yiddish writer Isaac Bashevis Singer, whose story about mysteries in eastern European village life is reinvented for David Schiff’s acclaimed opera Gimpel the Fool. Weisgall’s Esther, based on the biblical story, was premiered in 1993 and hailed by some critics as the most important American opera of its generation.