Opera has historically been dominated by white composers, but the contributions of Black artists of the past are finally being recognized and more works are being created. However stories that center Black characters often fail to gain traction with performing companies and audiences.
This summer, the nation's second oldest opera company seeks to change that with the first of three grand productions in a multi-year effort called the Black Opera Project.
Announced in 2024, the Black Opera Project is commissioning three original, full-length operas that celebrate the richness of the Black American experience. Each is written, composed, created and presented by Black artists.
It started with a question
One of the most well known operas featuring Black characters is George Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess. Artistic Advisor and Bass Morris Robinson was singing the title role in Cincinnati Opera's 2019 production, and was excited about an upcoming performance.
At the time, Robinson’s son had just entered high school and was coming to see the show with the middle and high school choruses.
Then a thought occurred to him.
“Part of me was embarrassed because in the first 10 minutes of that opera, there's gambling, drug abuse, alcoholism, violence and a murder," he recalls. "And I'm thinking, we've got these young, impressionable minds coming to the opera, to see his dad, and this is what they're going to see? I didn't want that to be what they walked away thinking opera was all about.”
The field trip occurred months after the movie Black Panther was a major box office hit — celebrating complex, intelligent, joyous Black characters. Robinson remembers wanting his son and his classmates to get that same impression and joy out of watching opera.
"So, I asked the question, when is the opera world going to do to the stage what Black Panther did to the cinema?"
Robinson brought the question to the Cincinnati Opera and Artistic Director Evans Mirageas, who agreed that Robinson was onto something.
"There were plenty of operas about Civil Rights and the murder of young Black children and slavery and all the trauma of African American life, but no one had explored the creativity and joy, and so we gathered and dreamed it up," says Mirageas.
The Black Opera Project
The company launched the Black Opera Project, and commissioned not one, but three brand new works to be written, composed, created and presented by Black artists, and featuring positive, uplifting stories.
"We launched the Black Opera Project to illuminate dimensions of the Black American experience that have not yet been represented by our art form," Mirageas says. "As I said, we have many operas about the trauma that Black people have gone through in our country for over 400 years, but this is the first time we're going to be creating, consciously, an opera that shows the joy and the creativity and the sense of community that exists for good."
Mirageas says the Black Opera Project aims to not only expand opera’s world view and repertoire, but with shows that will be performed time and again.
Lalovavi
The first production is Lalovavi — pronounced: lah-low-VAH-ve — making its world debut July 9 and 11 in Cincinnati. Set 400 years in the future, Lalovavi is an Afrofuturist adventure in the city formerly known as Atlanta.
The music is composed by pianist Kevin Day, with story and libretto by poet Tifara Brown, who chose to write it in English and in Tut, a secret, real language used to teach enslaved people how to spell and read English.
“Our story is based in the Deep South. Tut is indigenous to the deep South. So I just presented it to the opera and said, 'I would like to incorporate this very real, very historic and this continually living language into the opera,' " she recounts. "So not only is this the first Afrofuturist opera ever, this is also the first media production in history to ever incorporate the Tut language."
"Lalovavi" is the Tut word for "love."
The story is set 400 years in the future and follows Persephone, the youngest daughter of the ruler of Atlas, formerly Atlanta. When she's discovered to have a coveted gene that confers immortality, she's thrust into a journey to discover love's true meaning and the power to determine her destiny.
Cincinnati Opera is hoping the crowds "love" Lalovavi.
While it will be performed in Cincinnati’s famed Music Hall, Artistic Director Mirageas says all three operas in the Black Opera Project are being designed so they can be scaled for grand opera houses or smaller venues.
"I hope that the example that we are giving will be taken up by other companies in the most simple way of producing these operas, but also perhaps to spur more exploration of communities and members of our society whose stories have not been told," he says.
And create a pipeline for new Black talent.
The other two operas will debut in the following two years. They include John Lewis: Good Trouble — a tribute to Civil Rights icon and U.S. Congressman John Lewis, in June 2027; and Good Bones in summer 2028.
Just announced in June, Good Bones follows a young couple renovating a historic home in a historically Black neighborhood within an up-and-coming city, compelling them to contend with spirits past and present. It's based on the play of the same name from Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright James Ijames, who will write the libretto.
Read more:
- Cincinnati Black Opera Project announces third commission
- Afrofuturist opera set 400 years in the future to debut in Cincinnati
- Paul McCartney's 'Liverpool Oratorio' to make world stage premiere at Cincinnati Opera
Cincinnati Opera is a financial supporter of Cincinnati Public Radio.
