Panel + Performance: Castor and Patience
This event is a sneak-peek concert preview performance of excerpts from the opera Castor and Patience by composer Gregory Spears and Pulitzer Prize-winner Tracy K. Smith that was commissioned by and will premiere with the Cincinnati Opera this summer. Set during the mortgage crisis of 2008, Castor and Patience tells the story of African American cousins who find themselves at odds over the fate of land their ancestors have owned since Reconstruction. Castor has a ballooning mortgage to contend with; cashing in on his share of the family land would save his home and maybe even his sanity. Patience has been fighting as long as she can remember to stave off overzealous developers from whittling away the history she descends from. But if they’re going to get anywhere as a family, they must first learn to see past their differing allegiances and trust one another. Castor and Patience is the story not just of a single family or even a particular geography, but of America’s warring tensions between reckoning with the hard facts of history and racing blindly forward toward the dream of progress. In addition to musical excerpts introduced by the composer and librettist, this event will explore the history of black land loss in the South and the way that history has informed the story of the opera.
Program:
10:21 Excerpt 1: CASTOR and CELESTE: “When are you going to mention it?”
18:50 Excerpt 2: PATIENCE and WEST: “Imagine what it’s like”
21:40 Excerpt 3: WEST: “Now in reality, very few of us were given land”
27:01 Excerpt 4: CASTOR, WEST, and CELESTE: “See that moss hanging on those trees?”
31:30 Excerpt 5. CELESTE and PATIENCE: “We don’t have time for a blessing”
35:00 Excerpt 6: PATIENCE, CELESTE, CASTOR, and WEST: “Think you know this man?”
For transcript and more information, visit https://www.loc.gov/item/webcast-10317
