ABOUT
Celebrating diversity in song, this recital was co-curated with mezzo-soprano Ronnita Miller and explores the many things our hearts desire.
Featuring compositions by women and people of color, the program includes selections about romantic desire, physical desire, and the longing for home, for rest, for peace, and for a better world and was performed by select 2021 Merola young artists.
PROGRAM
INTRODUCTION
ROBERT OWENS: Havana Dreams
PASSION
HENRY THACKER BURLEIGH: Her Eyes, Twin Pools
HENRY THACKER BURLEIGH: Your Lips are Wine
HENRY THACKER BURLEIGH: Among the Fuchsias from Five Songs of Laurence Hope
HENRY THACKER BURLEIGH: Tide
PEACE / REST
HOWARD SWANSON: I Will Lie Down In Autumn
ZENOBIA POWELL PERRY: Pastourelle
FOR HOME / FOR A BELOVED PLACE
CHEN YI: Bright Moonlight
LAUREANO QUANT: Ahora hablo de gaitas
ZENOBIA POWELL PERRY: Alien
A BETTER WORLD
STACY GARROP: What Can One Woman Do? from In Eleanor's Words
LUST
MOHAMMED FAIROUZ: After The Revels
JUSTINE F. CHEN: Whilst Alexis Lay Press'd
A DIFFERENT LIFE
IAN CUSSON: Where There's A Wall from Where There's A Wall
FLORENCE PRICE: Sympathy
ROBERT OWENS: Heart
ERROLLYN WALLEN: Daedalus
LOVE
UNDINE SMITH MOORE: Lyric for Truelove
VIET CUONG: O Do Not Love Too Long
UNDINE SMITH MOORE: I want to die while you love me
MARIA GREVER: Jurame
CRITICAL ACCLAIM
“In its first public performance since 2019, the San Francisco Opera Center’s summer training program brought out 11 of its young artists — six singers, five piano accompanists — for a wonderful group recital devoted exclusively to music by women and people of color. It was a potent reminder that while music itself has been somewhat absent from our lives for the duration of the pandemic, the work of these composers — some of it dating to the early decades of the 20th century — has been absent far longer, and for less acceptable reasons…there was no denying the expressive power and variety of the music…It also laid down a marker for future endeavors, reminding us that the music we’ve grown accustomed to hearing in these settings is very far from the only music worth hearing. Let’s hope this moral continues to run like a silver thread through future activities as well.”