This week’s Sunday Opera (12/17 3:00 p.m.) features two contemporary works that look at the human stories surrounding slavery in the United States.
Our main work comes to us from LA Opera On-Air. It’s the 2022 work by Rhiannon Giddens and Michael Abels that is based on the remarkable life of Omar Ibn Said, a West African Islamic scholar who was abducted when he was 37 and taken to Charleston where he was sold to a rather harsh master. The story is based on Omar’s memoir which is thought to be the only slave memoir written in Arabic. The opera is a wonderful study in resilience that is told “in a way that is gripping and beautiful.”
The cast includes James McCorkle as Omar, Amanda Lynn Bottoms as Fatima, Omar’s mother, Norman Garret as Abdul, Omar’s brother, and Jacaqueline Echols as Julie, another slave who leads Omar to a better life. Other members of the cast include Daniel Okulitch as the two opposing slave owners Johnson and Owens and Deepa Johnny as Owen’s Daughter, Eliza. The conductor for this performance is Kazem Abdullah.
We’ll turn to three shorter works by Michael Abels after the opera. These are: Global Warming, Winged Creatures, and Delights and Dances, and each is wonderful in its own way.
After this, we’ll end our time together with another piece based on the plight of slaves in the United States in the contemporary “American historical oratiorio” featuring music by Paul Moravec, “Sanctuary Road.” The text by Michael Campbell is based on the incredible writing of William Still, an African American abolitionist who lived in Philadelphia. Still, while working for the Pennsylvania Anti-Slavery Society, compiled personal histories taken through interviews with escaping slaves as they passed through Philadelphia. The resulting book, “The Underground Railroad Records” which was finished in 1872, chronicles the stories of 649 slaves who escaped through the Underground Railroad.
“Sanctuary Road” features soloists Laquita Mitchell, Raehann Bryce-Davis, Joshua Blue, Malcolm J. Merriweather, and Dashon Burton, and they’re joined by the Oratorio Society of New York Chorus and Orchestra. Kent Tritle conducts.
