Lalovavi, an Afrofuturist opera by Kevin Day and libretto by Tifara Brown, makes its world premiere this week.
Lalovavi, premiering July 9, is the first of three operas commissioned by the Cincinnati Opera’s Black Opera Project.
The audience finds Lalovavi 400 years in the future in Atlas, once known as Atlanta, controlled by the dictator Titan. His daughter, Persephone, escapes her father’s sinister plans for her future and encounters the Nunewak society outside Atlas, a culture attuned to nature with its own language.
Among the cast members is internationally acclaimed bass Morris Robinson, who also had a major role fostering the initiative that became the Black Opera Project.
In summer of 2019, Robinson was singing Porgy in Cincinnati Opera’s production of the Gershwins’ Porgy and Bess.
“I appreciate the role, I love it, but my problem is the perpetuation of narratives that are always present in dramatic genres: violence, drugs, alcohol, submission, gambling, police intervention,” he said. “We’re downtrodden.”
He shared his frustration with Cincinnati Opera’s artistic director Evans Mirageas, who had further conversations with other cast members and with Tracy Wilson, Cincinnati Opera’s director of community engagement and special projects, who shared Robinson’s concerns.
Mirageas was determined to respond to Robinson’s challenge.
“I didn’t know where we’d come up with funding for commissions,” he said, “But our company’s long history with new works was crucial to achieving our goal.”
Cincinnati Opera’s reputation for introducing new operas strengthened in 2011 with the launch of Opera Fusion: New Works, a collaborative partnership with the University of Cincinnati’s College-Conservatory of Music. Funded by the Mellon Foundation, the program hosts week-long residencies in Cincinnati that allow composers and librettists to workshop and refine new American operas.
Many of those workshopped operas have gone on to major productions internationally, including Doubt, Hadrian, Champion, Fellow Travelers, Blind Injustice, Morning Star, Intimate Apparel and Lincoln in the Bardo.
Mirageas contacted the Mellon Foundation’s then program officer Susan Feder, who notified him several months later that the Foundation would fund not one but three operas, which became the Black Opera Project.
The partial funding was for commissions. Cincinnati Opera committed to raising $6 million for production and artistic costs.
Lalovavi is Black Opera Project’s first commission and Morris Robinson helped recruit composer Kevin Day, whose music he heard when performing in Fort Worth, Texas.
“His music is beautiful, with a cinematic sweep,” Morrison said. “He was in mid-20s and many of his works for brass and woodwinds are now standard audition pieces for conservatories and top ensembles.”
Day, in turn, recruited spoken word artist Tifara Brown, with whom he worked at a college festival. Neither Brown nor Day had worked in opera, but Morris said, “they dove in” and immersed themselves in the genre.
“Cincinnati Opera gave us the resources we needed, from going to performances to working with us throughout the process,” Brown said. “I found that opera is song with poetic elements, not poetry in song. My craft as a spoken word artist and poet helped bring those images to life and helped elevate the storytelling aspect of what my characters were going through.”
Kevin Day found himself slowing down his usual composing process, spending time at the piano and trying out melodic lines.
“But I wasn’t only writing vocal lines,” he said. “I was writing for the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, a large, amazing ensemble, and that was so exciting.”
The challenges were substantial for both creatives and they went through three iterations before Lalovavi’s stage director and dramaturg Kimille Howard urged them to envision their opera on a grand scale.
“What if we allowed ourselves to dream and see ourselves in a world that we create, where we aren’t constantly traumatized by reminders of how difficult our existence is,” she said.
The shift to Afrofuturism encouraged the team to create a narrative of power—one featuring women and men as leaders in a nation of community that is whimsical, magical and joyful.
Brown imagined a world 400 years in the future, set in the deep South but transformed into an epic, science-fiction reality. She also incorporated Tut, a secret language created in the 18th and 19th centuries by enslaved Africans, making it the first time Tut will be heard in an opera. The opera’s title is Tut for love.
Tut serves as a dramatic metaphor. English is the state language of the rigid, oppressive world of Atlas, while Tut is spoken by the rebels. Tut expert Veronica Bey worked with cast members on pronunciation and the language’s history.
Musically, Kevin Day’s score incorporates moments of orchestral grandeur and human intimacy. Highlights include a tone poem Day calls “Luminous Forest” in Act II—a musical interlude and ballet showcasing the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra. There are powerful arias and choral moments utilizing the full power of a 24-member chorus. As a brass player himself, Day ensured that the brass section is featured throughout the opera.
Visually, scenic designer Steven Kemp describes the sets as “space that breathes. Structures that listen. Design isn’t backdrop—it’s emotional architecture.”
Kara Harmon’s vivid costume designs draw on ancestral heritage, technological potential and nature’s colorful palette. They are at once futuristic and evocative of the old South.
For Wilson, Lalovavi is already an extraordinary achievement. She shares Robinson’s aspiration for a Black Panther moment in opera, depicting Black people in positions of power and agency and says there is widespread enthusiasm for the opera throughout the area’s Black communities.
Wilson has been a force for Cincinnati Opera’s community engagement for over 40 years, and her “boots on the ground” initiatives range from creative team members interacting with students in the juvenile court system and a community-powered mobile mural series overseen by Soul Palette founders Brandon and Ewaniki Hawkins.
She’s delighted by excitement from unexpected places, like the woman who’s celebrating her 65th birthday by inviting 65 friends to join her on opening night, and learning that people who never attended a Cincinnati Opera performance are buying Lalovavi tickets.
For Tracy Wilson and for Cincinnati Opera, these responses are as vital to the Black Opera Project as the creation of new works.
“My goal has always been to have as many different people in the room at the same time experiencing this amazing art form,” Wilson said. “It’s exciting, it’s powerful, it’s a celebration.”
