March daily: Identity
Starting this time-changing week with a game-changing opera and a heart-changing artist.
Monday: the As One family
Laura Kaminsky, Mark Campbell, and Kimberly Reed created the opera As One in 2014, and since then it’s become the most frequently performed 21st century opera across North America - and at times, has been in the top ten most frequently produced operas, full stop. The story of a human person coming to terms with their gender identity, told by two singers and a string quartet, has resonated with audiences, performers, and companies on several levels. The small forces have made performance accessible. The story has been welcomed by trans listeners and many others, and has also been challenged. The creators have traveled all over the country to talk about their process and to listen to audiences from every community. The impact of this piece, and of the creative team behind it, on American opera is hard to overstate.
Tuesday: tenor Karim Sulayman
I’ve known Karim for a long time, but he blew my mind in 2016 with his performance art work I Trust You. To watch my friend standing blindfolded in Columbus Circle, holding a sign that stated his fear as an Arab-American at the beginning of the Trump administration’s Muslim ban, asking passers-by to embrace him, was to experience admiration and terror all at once.
A few years later, he won a Grammy for Songs of Orpheus.
Karim curates an incredible variety of performances, sometimes speaking to his identity as a Lebanese-American, sometimes immersing himself in classic repertoire, always illuminating the human experience with passion and a commitment to unadorned beauty.
Both the wide-ranging As One family and the singular Karim make me think about identity and how each of us expresses it through what we play and listen to. How important it is, how individual - and how hearing something from another’s perspective can simultaneously clarify and expand our own sense of self.
thanks for reading.