MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
Opera has historically been dominated by white composers. More Black artists are being recognized now, but stories that center Black characters still often fail to gain traction with both performing companies and audiences. This summer, the nation's second oldest opera company is trying to change that with the Black Opera Project. From member station WVXU in Cincinnati, Tana Weingartner reports.
TANA WEINGARTNER, BYLINE: One of the most well-known operas featuring Black characters is George Gershwin's "Porgy And Bess."
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MORRIS ROBINSON: (Singing) Oh I got plenty o' nuttin' and nuttin's plenty for me. I got the sun. I got the moon. I got the deep blue sea.
WEINGARTNER: Bass Morris Robinson was singing the title role in this 2019 Cincinnati Opera production.
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ROBINSON: (Singing) Seems wid plenty you sure gots to worry how to sweep that debbel away.
WEINGARTNER: 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.
ROBINSON: And part of me was embarrassed because in the first 10 minutes of that opera, there's gambling, drug abuse, alcoholism, violence and a murder. And I'm thinking we've (ph) 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.
WEINGARTNER: 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.
ROBINSON: So I asked the question, when is the Opera world going to do to the stage what "Black Panther" did to the cinema?
WEINGARTNER: Robinson, who also serves as artistic adviser with the Cincinnati Opera, brought the question to the company and artistic director Evans Mirageas who agreed that Robinson was onto something.
EVANS MIRAGEAS: There are 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.
WEINGARTNER: 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. Mirageas says the Black Opera Project aims to not only expand opera's worldview and repertoire, but with shows that will be performed time and again.
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WEINGARTNER: The first production is "Lalovavi," making its world debut July 9 and 11 in Cincinnati. The music is composed by pianist Kevin Day with story and libretto by poet Tifara Brown. Set 400 years in the future, "Lalovavi" is an Afrofuturist adventure in the city formerly known as Atlanta. Brown says the opera is sung in English and Tut, a secret real language used to teach enslaved people how to spell and read English. Soprano Talise Trevigne sings the signature aria from the production.
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TALISE TREVIGNE: (Singing in Tut).
TIFARA BROWN: Our story is based in the Deep South. Tut is indigenous to the Deep South. So I 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. 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.
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TREVIGNE: (Singing) Lalovavi come to me.
BROWN: Lalovavi is the Tut word for love. So in order to say, I love you, you say, (speaking Tut). And that means I love you in Tut.
WEINGARTNER: Cincinnati Opera is hoping the crowds love it too. While "Lalovavi" 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.
MIRAGEAS: 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.
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TREVIGNE: (Singing) Lalovavi, lalovavi.
WEINGARTNER: And create a pipeline for new Black talent. For NPR News, I'm Tana Weingartner in Cincinnati. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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