Operas based on true events
Last summer, a classical radio station based in Wake Forest, N.C. announced that it would not be broadcasting several of the Metropolitan Opera’s productions of modern operas during the 2023-24 season. In a letter to listeners, station manager Deborah Proctor wrote that she’d found those operas unsuitable for broadcast first because the music was “discordant and difficult,” and also because they included “adult themes and harsh language, particularly in English.”
Once the letter went public, backlash was swift, and the station reversed course. The public quickly noticed that the operas on Proctor’s naughty list engaged with subject matter including queerness, racism, and unorthodox depictions of religion. Less obviously, but no less important, four were inspired by true events within the last century.
The news moves quickly, and the process of creating an opera does anything but, so it’s not too common to see an opera directly ripped from the headlines. However, many composers and librettists have found the opera stage a fine lens through which to examine specific moments in history or illustrate the lives of individual figures.
In opera’s earliest days, the characters were mostly based on mythological or heroic figures, and some vestiges of that historical halo still remain. When real people are given voice through opera, it reminds the audience to not ignore or forget them, because their stories are worth telling and retelling.
Here are a few examples.
“Nixon in China,” composer John Adams, librettist Alice Goodman
The word “operatic” has often been used (some might say overused) metaphorically to describe particularly dramatic moments in world politics, but in “Nixon in China,” the politics are the opera itself. The three-act opera imagines then-United States President Richard Nixon’s historic 1972 state visit to the People’s Republic of China, using well-documented real events to explore the inner landscapes of people who have become living symbols.
Listen: “I am old and I cannot sleep,” the opera’s pensive and restless final aria, sung by Chinese diplomat Zhou Enlai; performed by baritone Chen-Ye Yuan.
“Dead Man Walking,” composer Jake Heggie, librettist Terrence McNally
Roman Catholic nun and anti-death penalty advocate Helen Prejean’s book of the same name served as the inspiration for Jake Heggie’s harrowing 2000 opera, which has since been produced in houses across the United States and abroad. The story is that of the nun’s death-row ministry to Joseph De Rocher, a fictional character based on condemned men that the real Prejean counseled. Joseph is unquestionably guilty of crimes that most would consider irredeemable, and the opera urges its characters — and through that, its listeners — to see humanity even in those we cannot forgive.
Listen: “This journey,” sung by Sister Helen; performed by mezzo Joyce DiDonato.
“Omar,” composers Rhiannon Giddens and Michael Abels, libretto by
Giddens
The winner of the 2023 Pulitzer Prize in Music was inspired by the life and writings of Omar ibn Said, an Islamic scholar from present-day Senegal who was kidnapped in the early 19th century at age 37 and enslaved in South Carolina, where he professed to convert to Christianity. In fact, he wrote several Islamic texts in Arabic, a language his enslavers could not understand. Propped up by white Christians as an example of successful evangelism during his life and nearly forgotten since his death in 1864, only recently have historians, artists, and scholars begun to read between the lines of his complex life story.
Listen: “Julie’s Aria,” in which a fictional friend of Omar’s reminisces about her father’s Muslim religious practices; performed by composer Rhiannon Giddens. A recording of the opera has yet to be released.
“Lili Elbe,” composer Tobias Picker, librettist Aryeh Lev Stollman
Danish painter and transgender woman Lili Elbe (18821931) was one of the earliest recipients of gender confirmation surgeries, and in 2023, her life story became the basis for one of the first full-length operas written with a transgender singer in mind. The libretto was based on Elbe’s own writings, and Picker wrote the title role for American baritone Lucia Lucas, who enthusiastically accompanied the project from its earliest stages. “The difference between this role and most other roles that I do is that I have so many parallel experiences, some of the same things said to me or by me in my life,” Lucas told OperaWire in an interview shortly before the opera’s world premiere at Switzerland’s Theater St. Gallen.
Listen: Introduction to “Lili Elbe.” The full opera is available until June on operavision.eu. A recording of the opera has yet to be released.
“Flight,” composer Jonathan Dove, librettist April De Angelis
Unlike the other operas on this list, Dove and De Angelis’s 1998 “Flight” doesn’t zero in on a specific event or the life of a historical figure. However, it found its genesis in the true story of Mehran Karimi Nasseri, an Iranian refugee who lived in a departure lounge in France’s Charles de Gaulle Airport between 1988 and 2006. “Flight” is a self-contained collection of poignant character studies, exploring the interactions between several fictional travelers, staff, and an unnamed “Refugee” over a single day as the airport shuts down during a severe storm.
Listen: “Dawn, Still Darkness,” sung by the Refugee; performed by countertenor Aryeh Nussbaum Cohen.