Tuesday’s concert in the RBA was a chance to listen to some of the music that will feature in Aportia Chryptych: A Black Opera for Portia White (music by Sean Mayes, libretto by HAUI) when it premieres in the COC Theatre later this year.

The opera is based on the life of Nova Scotia singer Portia White; the first Black Canadian to have an international singing career.  On Tuesday we got to hear some of the numbers from the opera with a commentary from the creators.  It’s a mix of newly composed music and music, in various genres, associated with Portia White and her career.  So besides the original songs, there are opera arias, spirituals and popular songs of various kinds.

I didn’t really get a sense of how the piece will hang together.  One could gather that it will involve Portia White as a living character and in some sort of after-life but that’s as much as I could figure out.  What is clear is that they have assembled a very talented cast.  Various “aspects” of Portia White will be represented by Neema Bickersteth, Jonelle Sills and SATE.  They are all very good singers in and beyond, their usual genres.  We saw that with opera arias from Neema (“Ombra mai fu”) and Jonelle (“Spargi d’amaro pianto”) and the Creole folk song Oh Wasn’t Chère, mo lemmé toi from SATE.  The spirituals and newly composed music was shared around in various combos.  All of this was ably supported by Joy Brown on piano and Matthew Machanda on percussion.

It will be interesting to see the final product come June!

Photo credits: Karen E. Reeves