Freedom Ride At The Chicago Opera Theatre
Concert Choir Sings With Joan W. Harris Visiting Music Scholar
Upper School Concert Choir students sang alongside members of the Chicago Opera Theater during MX on Monday, February 24, and an evening talk on Tuesday, February 25. Chicago Opera Theater is the Joan W. Harris Visiting Music Scholar this year, the third year of the residence program at Parker. The MX and talk included an interview with Linden Huebner, who is the Chicago Opera Theater’s Director of Education; Dan Shore, the composer of “Freedom Ride;” and Dara Rahming, who plays Sylvie Davenport. In “Freedom Ride,” Sylvie, a woman from New Orleans, has to choose between joining the Freedom Riders or continuing her academics. There was a performance by the Concert Choir and a performance with both the Concert Choir and the performers from the Freedom Ride Opera.
“Freedom Ride” is about the summer of 1961. It follows Sylvie Davenport who is facing the decision of whether to join the Freedom Riders or not. The world premiere of “Freedom Ride” was at the Studebaker Theater on Saturday, February 8. Parker students junior Bella Charfoos, fifth-grade Sam Goldblatt, sixth grader Victoria Grove, senior Gigi Lopez and third grader Alexa Sterling, who are all part of the Chicago Opera Theater Children’s Chorus, sang during performances of “Freedom Ride.” “This opera celebrates the courage of the Freedom Riders and reminds us of the courage in our own hearts to stand up for what is right,” Huebner said.
“The story of the Freedom Riders is complicated,” Shore said. “But I wanted the opera to be about one young person who was trying to make a decision and had decided that this was something that she wanted to do. She wanted to get on this bus, she wanted to go through with this Freedom Ride, she wanted to risk her life and make the sacrifice, but she was too scared to do it. For me, the plot of the opera was simply all of these obstacles that Sylvie has to overcome, so that the very final moment of the opera she picks up her suitcase and proudly walks onto that bus.”
The Freedom Riders were groups of civil rights activists who went on interstate bus trips through the south during the summer of 1961 as a way to protest segregated buses. The Freedom Riders tried to use whites-only lunch counters and bathrooms in southern states. Many groups were arrested or faced violence on their routes. “They prepared themselves for direct confrontation with the injustices as well as connection and community with their fellow citizens in an effort to ensure that all of us can be free,” Upper School English teacher Theresa Collins said.
The Chicago Opera Theater was founded in 1973. The company runs in the Harris Theater for Music and Dance and the Studebaker Theater. The Visiting Music Scholar is a Residence program to provide experiences for students to understand classical music. They receive a grant from Parker and worked with Parker students. Young Artists from the Chicago Opera Theater worked with Middle and Upper School choir teacher Emma Castaldi’s Vocal Studio Class, and another member worked with lower schoolers in an opera workshop.
During the MX and evening event, Concert Choir sang “People Get Ready” by Curtis Mayfield, which was released in 1965 during the Civil Rights Movement. They also sang the Hallelujah Chorus and “Children, Can’t You Hear,” which is from the opera. They sang the songs with Chicago Opera Theater Young Artists John Mathieu, Morgan Middleton, William Ottow, Samantha Schmid, and Ryan Stoll. “Concert Choir also prepared something that was from the opera, and that was a really cool experience for Concert Choir because they got to hear professional operatic singers next to them,” Castaldi said, “and the power and the strength and the volume of those voices just were incredible.”
To prepare for the performances, Concert Choir students learned about the Freedom Riders and spoke with Collins and Upper School history teacher Andrew Bigelow. Collins shared a video from a Civil Rights trip during Cookies which showed Hollis Watkins, an organizer of the Freedom Summer, singing with Parker students. Concert Choir then sang along with the video.
“My goal for the session was to give just a little bit of a history lesson about the Freedom Rides and Freedom Summer and to share some thinking and understanding about the role that Freedom Songs played in the movement,” Collins said. “Singing was a way for those young people to literally be in tune with each other as they prepared each day for their eventual trips to the Deep South to register folks to vote, to work in Freedom Schools, to become connected to the communities in which they were visiting and working.”
“The best performing is done from a place of knowledge and compassion and empathy, which is what we worked a lot on in class because we were very sure to say that nobody in this class will ever understand the trials of these people,” Castaldi said. “But the closest we can come is trying to put ourselves into their shoes and have that empathy.”
