By Alix Cohen

“He wants me to go in a date?!” Clara Schumann (1819-1896) anxiously and excitedly tells us.* Having not had a man in her life for 17 years, like any widowed or divorced woman, Clara wonders aloud what to expect. She asks the audience. There’s no fourth wall. Monologue directly communicates. “Does dating stay in your muscle memory like playing piano?” she muses.

Suitor Johannes Brahms moved in after Clara’s husband Robert’s collapse and subsequent commitment to an asylum. He helped her manage the household and then seven children. (She was pregnant.) The pair bonded. After Robert’s death, Brahms moved out. In this scenario he returns to court Clara. Brahms never married. Clara never remarried.

Assignation is the starting point of this memory play. Clara chronicles what preceded. Like composer/pianist, Fanny Mendelssohn- (1805-1847), sister of Felix, her father single-mindedly trained her from a very young age. Music took priority over everything.

“I used to be such a rebel, secretly meeting my lover, Robert for years. I wasn’t scared,” she boasts. Though Clara found talk of a family and country cottage daunting, though her mother warned that marital demands would siphon time and energy from music, she went to court to marry at 16.

Life was rich and orderly until her husband’s decline. Clara gleefully refers to their ‘marriage diary’ for records of “sexual intercourse,” a term she never would’ve used.The real journal (an Ehetagebuch) was gifted by Robert on their wedding day to communicate “requests for which words may not suffice.” Terms like ‘passion’ and ‘physical affection’’ proliferated. Clara was frightened by her own lack of restraint. Here she revels in it.

There are references to successful touring and curiously, no complaints about the burden of motherhood. We hear about her first glimpse of Robert (She was nine. He was a student of her father), attempts, as a married woman, to secure illegal contraception, and her husband’s debilitation. She reads a portion of a letter written her by Brahms, “the thought of my sonata under your fingers…’ “I replied with music,” she says demonstrating. Monologue is broken up with classical music excerpts, each illuminating mood.

Clara introduces a relatable personality who dealt with restrictions in her own stubborn fashion, rising above mores.
The piece seems to cinematically fade instead of end.

Elena Mazzon looks rather like her heroine. Clara sees and speaks to us candidly. Facial expressions emerge sympathetic. The actress moves in graceful, measured fashion and plays well.

As the playwright, Mazzon deftly manages to encapsulate Schumann’s professional and private life. Having been attracted to the character not only as an accomplished musician, but also by the way she contrived to practice her art despite men’s pervasive influence and parenting eight children, we’re shown exemplary choices against the odds. “..It’s both a warning and lesson in today’s world.” (Elena Mazzon)

*Alas, the term ‘date’ was not coined until after Clara’s death. ‘Courting’ or ‘keeping company’ would’ve been used. Additionally, ‘boyfriend’ should be ‘beau’ or suitor.’

While some of her music was published in Clara’s lifetime, most of her reputation rested instead on an extraordinary career as a pianist and interpreter of others’ works.

Direction (Colin Watkeys) is appealingly natural, pacing unhurried. Excerpts of pieces Clara intermittently performs are well chosen. The character indicates she communicates best through music, even corresponding with it. Transitions are apt and fluid.

Photos by Douglas Robertson
Opening Elena Mazzon & Clara Schumann 1839 (Public Domain)

Clara- Sex, Love and Classical Music
Written and Acted by Elena Mazzon
Directed by Colin Watkeys
Music Director – Stefania Passamonte
Dramaturg- Catriona Kerridge

Through May 10, 2026
59E59 Theaters
https://www.59e59.org/shows/show-detail/clara-sex-love-and-classical-music/