Classical music meets soul, gospel, and protest songs in She Who Dared, a 1950s-set opera that highlights the rebellious Black women who helped dismantle bus segregation in the American South.
Presented and performed by Chicago Opera Theater (COT), the new work by Emmy award-winning composer Jasmine Arielle Barnes and acclaimed poet/librettist Deborah D.E.E.P. Mouton makes its world premiere at the Studebaker Theater in the Fine Arts Building (June 3-6).
“As the first professionally staged opera written by two Black women, this production is a testament to the evolving landscape of American opera,” says COT Edlis Neeson General Director Lawrence Edelson, who commissioned the opera via the American Lyric Theater’s Composer Librettist Development Program. “Yet, while this historic milestone is worth celebrating, She Who Dared stands on its own as a remarkable new addition to the repertoire. Jasmine and Deborah are two of the most exciting artists working in opera today.”
The Chicago-based Black chamber music collective D-Composed will serve as the orchestra for the premiere production alongside conductor Michael Ellis Ingram and director Timothy Douglas.
She Who Dared also features an all-Black female cast including sopranos Jacqueline Echols as Rosa Parks, Jasmine Habersham as Claudette Colvin, and Lindsey Reynolds as Mary Louise Smith, as well as mezzo sopranos Chrystal E. Willams as Aurelia Browder, Cierra Byrd as Jeanetta Reese, Deborah Nansteel as Jo Ann Robinson, and Leah Dexter as Susie “Mama Sue” McDonald.
Like Parks, whose prosecution for refusing to give in to racial segregation sparked the Montgomery bus boycott in the mid-1950s, Colvin, Browder, McDonald, and Smith were also arrested when they defied Jim Crow laws in the American South. As such, they became plaintiffs in Browder v. Gayle, the 1956 federal case that led to a Supreme Court ruling which marked segregated public transportation unlawful.
“With an incredibly compelling story that speaks to resilience, justice, and the power of community and its rich, evocative score, She Who Dared is a gripping, revelatory work — one that exemplifies the power of opera to illuminate the past while speaking directly to the present,” Edelson explains.
In anticipation of the world premiere, COT is hosting related events free of charge. These include the concert “Sounds of Progress: Opera and the Civil Rights” at the DuSable Black History Museum and Education Center (May 10); a preview “Close Up with She Who Dared” at The Newberry Library (May 15); and “Opera For All – All School Showcase” at the Studebaker Theater in the Fine Arts Building (May 20).
