Lyric Opera 2025-2026 Issue 11 - safronia

25 | Lyric Opera of Chicago Paul Byssainthe,Jr.conducts; Meagan McNeal as safronia during a workshop. Andrew Cioffi / Lyric Opera of Chicago In Black Opera: History, Power, Engagement (2022), musicologist Dr. Naomi André described Black opera as “the construction of Black experiences in opera, encompassing a variety of activities, such as operas by Black composers and librettists with stories about Black people sung by Black singers. Yet, having Black people involved in all these facets is not the only configuration for defining Black opera. Black opera can also include interracial partnerships that involve non- Black collaborators; for example, works incorporating Black narratives by non-Black writers or productions where, even if a character’s race is not specified as Black, opera companies give Black singers the opportunity to perform.” Unlike Lyric’s previous productions of Fire Shut Up in My Bones (2021/22), Factotum (2022/23), Champion (2023/24), and Blue (2024/25), safronia does not situate itself within a “classic” presentation of opera. Instead, through Black music and vernacular, young has designed an operatic experience unapologetically about, by, for , and near Black people, in line with W. E. B. Dubois’ instructions in The Crisis in 1926 — that artworks must serve as instruments for liberation. safronia ’s Booker family feels fully formed and blossoming with life because young knows the characters that shape the opera’s narrative well. His family’s Great Migration story loosely serves as the opera’s creative source material. In fact, when I asked young, “how much of safronia is autobiographical?” he replied that the work is “extremely inspired by events in the real lives of my great-grandfather and great- grandmother, Lillie Mae and Willie Booker.” The Bookers: baar (patriarch), magnolia (his wife and matriarch), safronia (their daughter), and king willie tate (her husband) function as the narrative’s primary family unit. They also serve as a quadriptych of archetypes representative of Black Americans’ individual responses to embodied and lived anti-Black trauma. baar and safronia self-soothe the forced abandonment of their dream of building a school on their land with alcohol; magnolia and king willie tate’s pragmatism compels them to prioritize survival over everything else. However, young’s creative vision remains incomplete if audiences do not empathize with the Bookers’ plight by considering two critical questions: How would you feel, Andrew Cioffi / Lyric Opera of Chicago