Edmond Flegenheimer better known as Edmond Fleg, was a Jewish French writer, thinker, novelist, essayist and playwright of the 20th century. Fleg's oeuvre was crucial in constructing a modern French Jewish identity, rendering him an instrumental figure in the Jewish awakening during the interwar years. After World War I, Jewish writers began articulating a new, cultural definition of what it meant to be a Jew within the context of French Third Republic universalism. Through his writings — based on Jewish and Christian texts—Fleg formed the foundation of a modern French Jewish spirituality and self-understanding, which allowed secular French Jews to preserve their Jewish identity. In doing so, Fleg was calling for an exploration of the living texts of traditional Judaism as the basis for a modern Jewish identity, establishing a new literary direction devoted to re-interpreting biblical texts and legends, and liturgies.
Edmond Fleg
Macbeth is an opera in three acts, with music by Ernest Bloch to a libretto by Edmond Fleg, after the eponymous play of William Shakespeare. Bloch composed the opera between 1904 and 1906, but it did not receive its first performance until 30 November 1910 by the Opéra-Comique in Paris with Henri Albers in the title role and conducted by François Ruhlmann. Alex Cohen has written of quarrels within the cast that contributed to the opera's poorly received premiere.
The composer in 1917