A new opera about a seminal moment in U.S. history opens this month at Chicago Opera Theater.
By Katherine Dubbs

Costume Design by Harry Nadal 

ON FEBRUARY 8, Chicago Opera Theater presents the world premiere of Dan Shore’s Freedom Ride, the story of a black university student who decides to take an active role in the U.S. civil-rights movement as a “Freedom Rider.” In May 1961, the Congress of Racicivil rights organization, selected seven black interstate bus line from Washington, D.C., to New Orleans. Although segregation in bus seating had been ruled unconstitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court as early as the mid 1940s, the rulings were not enforced in the South, and buses remained segregated. During the summer and early fall of 1961, more buses carried young activists from across the U.S. into the Deep South to defy segregationist practices; the so-called “Freedom Riders” were trained in CORE’s tradition of nonviolent civil disobedience. The Freedom Riders were arrested by local and state police, and many were turned over to angry mobs and beaten.

Costume Design by Harry Nadal

The work of the Freedom Riders ultimately led to the enforcement of federal policies intended to dismantle the legacy of Jim Crow segregation on bus lines and in bus terminals in the South. The Freedom Riders inspired other activists during the civil-rights movement, and composer Shore, who also crafted the libretto for Freedom Ride, believes that the work of the Freedom Riders remains inspirational today. “I would love for younger audience members to see [Freedom Ride] and say, ‘Wait a minute—this was a movement by young people who thought there was nothing they could do, but they found something they could do, and what they did was ultimately successful,’” he says.

Shore began working on the opera while teaching at Xavier University of Louisiana, a historically black college in New Orleans. “Freedom Ride was created and workshopped in very close collaboration with my colleagues at Xavier, several of whom lived through these events themselves, and my students at Xavier, who were every day living out the challenges of being a young African–American in the South,” Shore says. He acknowledges that as a white man he has a different perspective on the civil-rights movement from that of Sylvie Davenport, the fictional African–American protagonist of Freedom Ride. “All I can do is recognize the fact that I’ve been extremely privileged to tell this story and to do everything I can to get as much input as I possibly can from everyone around me to make sure that the work itself rings true for people.”

COT music director Lidiya Yankovskaya, who conducts the Freedom Ride run, is enthusiastic about how the opera fits the company’s commitment to diversity and its development of new American opera. “In opera today, and in opera in general, there’s a shortage of powerful female characters who are not abused in some way,” Yankovskaya says. “In Freedom Ride, we have Sylvie, a strong, educated black woman who decides over the course of the opera to take a risk, to take a stand, to stand up for what she believes in. She’s an extremely powerful character that we can not only relate to but also use as a model for our own lives.”