Lyric Opera 2024-2025 Issue 5 - Blue

Lyric Opera of Chicago | 28 and continues throughout this expressive reflection add a shimmer to this moment and its return several times in Act One. This wistful lyrical gesture, the pause and descending third, brings these women to life and helps us in the audience understand their vulnerable existence while also experiencing the mystery and joy in this moment. The midpoint of the opera, the heroic duet between The Father and The Reverend that opens Act Two, is weighted down by two deep basses who narrate the events that happened after Act One, and the devastating reality that now faces the young family and their community that we have grown to care so much about. The somber heaviness of two men encountering the clash between the misuse of the authority of the state (through a deadly mistake by the police) and the ineffective consolation of the church are reminiscent of the oppressively fraught duet between King Philip II of Spain and the Grand Inquisitor in Verdi’s Don Carl os. The dark moods contrast between these two operas as the leaders in Don Carlos rashly bargain murder and sacrifice for their own corrupt gain. In Blue the men are the victims, not the perpetrators, of a gross injustice; both suffer from systemic wrongs. In a momentous groundswell of pain, the “Lay my burden down” theme is first introduced briefly in the duet between The Father and The Reverend. This theme becomes the connective tissue for the second act and Epilogue. As the pause and falling third of wonder and anticipation were woven throughout the first half, the descending “Lay my burden down” theme feels at once recognizable and familiar as it unites the second half of the opera. It becomes the culmination of the funeral service at the end of Act Two, and the point in the Epilogue when you realize that the joy of a shared family dinner will never happen again. Historically and musically, Blue compassionately tells a story that is at once painful and identifiable to so many of us. Through the collaboration of an interracial compositional team, this opera offers a microcosm for listening to, and learning across, diverse vantage points and lived narratives. While Blue is not the only opera about Black experiences, it is part of a new era of Black operas in the United States that extends back to the 19th century and carries on to the present. The luster of this current golden age of Black operas is not due to the paucity of operas written before, but to the fact that new operas are joining earlier works that are finally emerging from the shadows and challenging the elitist reputation of opera as a genre. The presentation of Black lives in ways that reveal a three-dimensional humanity is appearing in an unlikely, yet increasingly emblematic place: opera. And the opera house is becoming an eloquent stage for a trenchant social justice. Naomi André is the David G. Frey Distinguished Professor in the Department of Music at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Professor Emerita at the University of Michigan. Adapted from liner notes for the Washington National Opera recording of Blue (Pentatone) Karli Cadel - The Glimmerglass Festival Karli Cadel - The Glimmerglass Festival The Father and Mother wrestle with grief,and the possible consolations of the Reverend.