PER MARCO PAVÉ ILS AMBITIOUS NEW HIP-HOP , ‘WELCOME TO GRC LND 2030’

plore the full spectrum of what opera is. We have to continue to ask questions about what opera can be.”

Opera Memphis will attempt to answer that over the next two weekends with The Opera 901 Showcase. Part of the Midtown Opera Festival, the program will debut five new short opera pieces “inspired by Memphis” and largely created by Memphis artists.

The series will include works on a range of topics, from 1980’s Bluff City wrestling to the sensational 1892 murder case of Freda Ward. The program will be highlighted by a performance led by rapper Marco Pavé called “Welcome to Grc Lnd 2030.” It’s an ambitious and timely hip-hop opera, that Pavé and company will present on April 7 and 14 at Playhouse on the Square.

As Canty notes, the American opera is currently in the midst of a creative boom. “There have actually been more new American operas written in this century than in the entire history of America before that,” he says. “There’s a big renaissance going on and a lot of interest in it. For us, developing new American operas is a part of our mission.”

In 2014, Opera Memphis presented a cycle of short commissions, “Ghosts of Crosstown,” based on oral histories of the Memphis neighborhood, which were performed in the pre-renovation Sears Crosstown building. “With this cycle, we wanted to spread it out a bit, and get a wider variety of Memphis stories and Memphis artists,” says Canty.

Among the first artists Canty enlisted was rapper Marco Pavé. Canty first met him in 2015, when Pavé presented one of his TED Talks on hip-hop activism. Canty saw an opportunity to tap into a fresh voice – a young African-American hip-hop artist and civil rights activist – to offer a different take on the well-established form of music theater.

“It’s really not so strange, though,” notes Canty. “It’s actually part of Memphis’ musical history and tradition. William Grant Still, the great African-American composer who went on to create so many fantastic operas and symphonies, began his career on Beale Street playing piano. And as an art form , hiphop, like opera, is absolutely about storytelling, always has been. So, it made a lot of sense for us to make that connection.”

With his 2017 album “Welcome to Grc Lnd” serving as a jumping off point, Pavé began developing a narrative to go along with his music – but he admits the process of translating his work to an unfamiliar millieu wasn’t easy at first.

“At one point, I was like ‘I don’t even know if I can do this. Ya’ll gonna have to find somebody else,’” says Pavé, laughing. “I had to go deeper in studying opera, learn how to write a libretto, understand what the structure looked like, and then get into character development. That’s when the ideas and songs started to come to me, when I figured who the characters were and what they would be saying. That’s when the whole thing really revealed itself to me” “Welcome to Grc Lnd 2030” is set in a quasi-dystopian future, where yellow fever is ravaging the black community in Grc Lnd (a city modeled on Memphis). With these life and death stakes as the backdrop, a new kind of civil rights movement emerges. A trio of actors/ singers/rappers — including Pavé’, Shawnette Sulker and Stephen Len White — each play dual roles, backed by a musical group that includes violin, cello, saxophone and a DJ, conducted by Sam Shoup. A line in Pavé’s piece — “Why they want to treat us like we nothing?” — has a particular resonance in light of this week’s Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. remembrances. “Given MLK50 and where we are right now, the connection between 1968’s ‘I Am a Man,’ and that line in [‘Grc Lnd 2030’] is pretty profound,” says Canty. “It’s the same sentiment and idea and thought process.”

Canty hopes that “Grc Lnd 2030,” and other works like it, can help affect some broader change. “The important thing is to make that transition from activist hip-hop to activist theater. It’s part of a classic tradition that goes back to the Depression and the Federal Theatre Project and the idea of theater that’s meant to challenge people’s perceptions and change their minds and to cause action.”

“Again, in America, our thoughts about opera are so tainted by the perceptions of elitism or class. But opera in Europe is a much more [populist] form with the ability to cause great change. The work of Verdi is credited with being one of the forces that brought about Italian reunification — simply through the power of some of the songs he wrote. That is part of the DNA of opera.”

Canty says that the upcoming performance — subtitled “The Demo” — is just sampling or teaser for what a full scale “Grc Lnd 2030” opera could look like. “It’s definitely more a collection of scenes, an intro to some characters,” says Canty. “We’re introducing it with idea that if people like what they see and hear they will want more.”

For his part, Pavé is hopeful the response and support will be there to allow for a full version of “Welcome to Grc Lnd 2030” to be produced.

“It’s been a pretty amazing to be a part of this process, to see people coming together for something I wrote. Seeing actors taking their lines seriously and rehearsing and having a director help develop what’s going on stage. It’s an amazing feeling and I definitely want to push the project forward.”