In the video posted below, by the Lyric — to describe what the audience’s experience would be like — the creator (and Illinois Poet Laureate) avery r. young said the musical work he would present would be “no chocolate-covered Mozart“.
The man was true to his word.
The musical score drives the both inspiring and harrowingly pathological story of the Great Migration forward, out of the deep South and up to Chicago, by following one newly land-owning Black family — threatened by the Klan — in the early parts of the 20th Century. The narrative then returns late in the second act — to the deep South, for a spreading of the ashes of the patriarch — over a half century later.
While there for a spiritual home-going, a supernatural apparition delivers the long delayed, and richly deserved, Karma — to the by now elderly Klanners.
To be sure, this was a marvelous first outing, by a primarily written-word artist, to stage a very modern opera — crossing seamlessly from gospel to blues, and on, to funk.
My only edit to the score, would be that the piece could have been interlaced with a very tender musical interlude — between either of the primary couples — that drive the narrative.
There could have been a slow, loving movement in the form of a song, or dance — for either of the couples (or both of them), to vary the pace, just a little bit. But the story is certainly primarily about struggle. And that struggle — we do see.
Here below is the author, talking about what he intended with the work — and now we await its next run, in some future theater venue, either in the city of big shoulders or in any other major city of the US:
Even in this, its present form — it is more than ready for New York, Houston, LA, Atlanta, Nashville or San Francisco. But being a romantic at heart — I would sure love to see at least one quiet love ballad inserted — as the present running time would certainly allow it to come in at under two and a quarter hours even with such an added number.
But that’s just me — certainly there was great and deep love, between these couples — and I do get that the story is about the struggle — and in those times, there might have very been little energy left for love, after working two jobs (18 hours in a day) — at the high end hotels of Chicago, followed by a night shift at a plastic factory. Then home for no more than five hours of exhausted sleep — and back, at the hotel lobby, by 7:30 am. So it went — over and over, for four long decades, at least.
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