(Opera vocalist Flora Hawk)
By Montague Gammon III
The most important show to take the stage at the Harrison Opera House since the US premiere of composer Thea Musgrave’s Mary Queen of Scots in 1978 and the world premiere of her Christmas Carol in 1979, maybe even since Diana Soviero debuted as Violetta in Traviata half a century ago this June, and got Virginia Opera national notice with a favorable review in New Yorker magazine, wraps up this 50th Anniversary season the last weekend of April.
That’s Loving v. Virginia, the true story of how a marriage between a White man named Richard Loving, and, to use the term then current, a “Colored,” woman, Mildred (Delores Jeter) Loving, a marriage illegal in Virginia and in many other states back in 1959, became the turning point in governmental restrictions on marriage, that most private and socially fundamental of legal institutions.
Though their town of Central Point Virginia, in Caroline County had many open romantic partnerships between Black and White, the Lovings went to DC to get married, were arrested, and sentenced to prison or banishment; incarceration unless they vowed to leave their home state and not return together for 25 years.
In 1967 their case reached the Supreme Court. Their conviction was reversed in a unanimous decision.
Now Richard and Mildred’s story, previously told in books and film and on TV, has come home to Virginia as an opera composed by Damien Geter with a libretto by Jessica Murphy Moo, directed by Denyce Graves-Montgomery and conducted by Virginia Opera Artistic Director Adam Turner.
At the Opera’s request, I jointly interviewed the leading singing actors: Flora Hawk and Jonathan Michie. Both made hosts of important points about the artistic importance of new operas and of the social importance of operas of currently important themes in general, and of Loving v. Virginia in particular, and even about the art form itself and their personal connections to the story.
Michie: “In opera …We’re trying to find the essence of the story and then use the art form of opera, which is unique in terms of magnifying the core emotions and the core dynamics… to find the essence of the story and then bring that to a heightened level through the music and through the art form of opera.”
“I love doing contemporary pieces that audiences can grab onto as far as a modern, mostly modern story, [and because they are new pieces] no one can walk into that room with any expectations of what it should be musically or what it should be in terms of the production design.”
Hawk: “[With] new music you can have fun, you can create your own, and people love it more because it’s new.”
Michie: “So the cool thing … is that it is pulling from a lot of different flavors of American music…classical and gospel and rock. There’s an electric guitar in the orchestra. The sonic world that Damien created encompasses all kinds of American traditions. So you can say it’s an American opera because it’s written and created by Americans but its musical language is very American as well.”
Hawk: “I am a product of interracial love and marriage; I am also currently in an interracial marriage with my husband and we have just created life out of that interracial love and so the story of Loving v. Virginia is my life through and through completely…There’s a lot of things that happen in the story that my husband and I go through, on a constant, on a daily daily, not even just in society but in our families, and just being able to tell the mixed race story because there’s a lot of people in the world who come from interracial love and our stories are never told, It’s either it’s Black or it’s White…You never fit. You never fit on one side or you never fit on the other. So getting to tell a piece of our personal history means the world to me.”
Michie: “I would just add …many other people in this project have different flavors of life experience with interracial dynamics. Many folks are involved in interracial marriages or are products of that, so for a lot of people involved there is an extra level of personal investment in trying to tell this story as best we can.”
Hawk: “And a lot of people don’t grow up learning this story…I feel like this is an extremely important story that should have been told.”
Michie: “I think one of the coolest things we are doing here is, my hope is, with these kind of stories …that people are going to walk into an opera house who have never been in an opera house before, an excuse to get people through the door, pull them in through the subject matter, where maybe they would not go into a quote-unquote normal opera.”
“We just want people to show up and experience this. But it’s about getting people in to experience this kind of story telling that you just wouldn’t get with a different kind of story.”
Hawk: Absolutely. And …it’s not about you coming back [after seeing an opera for the first time], it’s about being told something and learning something that you can apply to the world today and make it better, and that’s what we do it for, we want to change things for the better.
Michie: “That term American opera applies not just to the musical language but it’s a uniquely American story, and when this country gets it right it’s bringing cultures together; the melting pot idea that is uniquely American. Despite all the difficulties inherent in that, you can find a lot of beauty in that as well. I think that’s one of the main lessons of the story too.”
WANT TO GO?
Loving v. Virginia
Presented by Virginia Opera
Adam Turner, Conductor and Artistic Director
7:30 p.m., Fri. April 25
2:30 p.m., Sun., April 27
Edythe C. and Stanley L. Harrison Opera House
160 E. Virginia Beach Blvd., (Llewellyn at Va Beach Blvd.), Norfolk
866-673-7282 (1-866-OPERAVA)
Additional performances in Richmond and Fairfax
