In the first scene of “The Snowy Day,” a new opera based on the popular 1962
children’s book, a Black mother sings an aria as her young son, Peter, prepares
to go outdoors alone to explore the snow.
اضافة اعلان
“Oh,
how Mama’s eyes are watching this world,” she says.
The
moment conveys the anxiety that every parent feels when sending a child into
the unfamiliar. But in our times, the scene takes on a more painful
specificity, speaking to the fear and trauma experienced by many Black families
in particular.
“He’s a
Black boy in a red hoodie going out into the snow alone,” said Joel Thompson,
the composer of the work, which premieres at Houston Grand Opera on Thursday.
“That’s Tamir Rice; that’s Trayvon Martin. And we wanted to focus on Peter’s
humanity and his childlike wonder.”
“
The Snowy Day,” by Ezra Jack Keats, has long been a favorite, celebrated as one of
the first mainstream children’s books to prominently feature a Black
protagonist. It is the most checked-out book in the history of the New York
Public Library.
This
adaptation aims to help change perceptions about Black identity and attract new
audiences to opera at a time when the art form faces serious financial
pressures and questions about its future.
“We are
waking up to the idea that opera is for everyone,” said Andrea Davis Pinkney, a
children’s book author who wrote the libretto. “We are waking up to the fact
that, yes, this is your story, and your story, and my story, and our story.”
Since
their first meeting about four years ago at a deli near Carnegie Hall, Thompson
and Pinkney have been working to re-create the book’s sense of enchantment and
its nuanced portrayal of race.
The
opera, like the book, tells the story of Peter, who awakens one day to see the
world outside his window covered in a fresh blanket of snow. He ventures into
the cold, making snow angels, watching a snowball fight, meeting a friend and
sliding down a hill.
While
Thompson and Pinkney tried to stay true to the spirit of Keats’ work, they also
took liberties. Several new characters are introduced, including Amy, a Latina
friend of Peter’s who teaches him some words in Spanish.
The
creators wanted the work to show a Black family that was happy and intact to counter
stereotypes in popular culture of dysfunction and despair in Black communities.
They added a father, who is featured in later books by Keats but not in “The
Snowy Day,” to avoid any suggestion that Peter was being raised by a single
mother. They reworked the libretto several times, choosing to describe Peter as
a “beautiful boy” rather than to explicitly mention his race. (An early draft
described him as a “brown sugar boy.”)
“It’s
about a loving family who happens to be a family of color,” Pinkney said. “That
is the universal nature of ‘The Snowy Day.’”
Thompson
chose to ground the score in a four-note motif that appears throughout the
opera, which lasts about an hour. Some passages evoke hymns; others, like the
snowball fight, take a jazzy, irreverent turn.
Because
there is no dialogue in the book, much of the libretto is invented. When Peter
sees the snow outside his window at the start of the opera, he sings:
"Morning promise, rising. Surprising me with its splendor on the sidewalks
and streets."
Omer
Ben Seadia, director of the production, said she hoped the work would resonate
with people, even if they had never read “The Snowy Day” or seen an opera
before.
“There
are a lot of people who are stepping in for the first time,” she said. “Our
challenge is to make the opera as magical as possible.”
She
added: “If you don’t know the book; if you, like me, didn’t grow up with snow;
if you’ve never seen an opera, there are so many things that make this opera so
accessible and familiar.”
The
production is notable for its efforts to showcase Black and Latino artists —
especially women — who historically have been severely underrepresented in
classical music. The idea to adapt the book originally came from soprano Julia
Bullock, who was set to play the role of Peter but withdrew because of travel
restrictions related to the pandemic, which also forced the cancellation of the
scheduled premiere last year.
Peter
is now played by Raven McMillon, and the cast also includes soprano
Karen Slack
as Mama, bass-baritone Nicholas Newton (Daddy) and soprano Elena Villalón
(Amy).
Khori
Dastoor, who starts next month as Houston Grand Opera’s general director and
chief executive, said presenting works that reflect a broad range of
experiences and perspectives was essential to the future.
“Our
mission centers on advancing opera as an art form and building the diverse
audiences of tomorrow,” Dastoor said.
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