In October 2024, Seattle Opera presents the world premiere of Jubilee, a brand new opera telling the story of how the Jubilee Singers of Fisk College popularized African American spirituals within the years following the Civil Conflict. These conventional songs, created, refined, and shared anonymously by enslaved People, are the inspiration on which all American music has been constructed. The music is wild and intense; lovely and painful; stuffed with despair, hope, and uplift. African American opera singers have lengthy championed the spirituals, typically concluding concert events and recitals with these beloved songs. Jubilee makes of the spirituals a full night’s leisure.
“After I got here to Nashville I noticed the good temple builded of those songs towering over the pale metropolis,” wrote W. E. B. Du Bois in The Souls of Black Folks in 1903. “To me Jubilee Corridor appeared ever manufactured from the songs themselves, and its bricks have been purple with the blood and mud of toil. Out of them rose for me morning, midday, and night time, bursts of great melody, stuffed with the voices of my brothers and sisters, stuffed with the voices of the previous.”
In Jubilee, 13 opera singers, plus a 48-piece orchestra, carry out dozens of beloved spirituals. You’ll hear solo singing and ensemble singing; moments of beautiful a cappella depth and in addition voices totally supported by orchestra. The orchestra additionally contribute a full of life overture and an entr’acte. Dianne Adams McDowell organized the vocal elements and Michael Ellis Ingram created the orchestration. The opera is created by Tazewell Thompson, who has been learning and accumulating spirituals for years.
An entire (alphabetical) listing of spirituals in Jubilee:
Balm in Gilead
Deep River
Dere’s No Hidin’ Place Down Right here
Didn’t My Lord Ship Daniel
Do, Lord, Bear in mind Me
Ezekiel Noticed the Wheel
Go Down, Moses
Gonna Journey Up within the Chariot
Good Information, Chariot’s A-Comin’
Grace
Nice Day
I Am a Poor Pilgrim of Sorrow
I Imagine I’ll Go Again House
I Acquired a Gown
Jubilee
Let Us Break Bread Collectively
Lord, How Come Me Right here?
Lord, I Acquired a Proper to the Tree of Life
Lordy, Received’t You Assist Me?
My God Is So Excessive
No person Is aware of the Bother I’ve Seen
Oh, What A Lovely Metropolis
On Ma Journey Now
Over My Head I Hear Music within the Air
Loads Good Room
Set Down, Servant
Generally I Really feel Like a Motherless Little one
Standin’ Within the Want Of Prayer
Steal Away
Solar Don’t Set within the Mornin’
Swing Low, Candy Chariot
There’s a Meetin’ Right here Tonight
Trampin’
Wade within the Water
We Are Nearly House
Plus, an additional bonus: when the Jubilees’ strongest soprano, Maggie Porter, threatens to go away the group and set off on her personal, she’ll sing a passage from La forza del destino, an opera Verdi wrote for Russia whereas the Civil Conflict was raging in america.
Be part of us at Seattle Opera in October for Jubilee!
Jubilee runs October 12–26, 2024 at McCaw Corridor.
Tickets and data at seattleopera.org/jubilee.
