The Architecture of Music: Composer Michael Abels on His New Opera with Rhiannon Giddens, Omar, and Balancing the Creative and Structural in His Work
Michael Ables. Credit: Eric Schwabel.
Among the countless projects classical music presenters have had to delay over the past two years, perhaps none has been more eagerly anticipated than that of Omar, a new opera from Rhiannon Giddens and Michael Abels.
Originally slated to premiere in May 2020, Omar finally received its long-awaited opening this summer at the Spoleto Festival USA in Charleston, South Carolina. Based on the life and 1831 autobiography of Omar ibn Said, a Muslim scholar stolen from his homeland of Senegal and twice sold into slavery in the Carolinas, Giddens and Abels' new opera probes largely unexplored truths in modern American discussions of slavery.
For Abels, Omar's history — one of strength, resistance, and religious conviction — is not only timely, given the U.S.'s continued reckoning with its history of slavery, but it also makes for compelling storytelling on the operatic stage.
"This story is great fodder for opera, which tackles social issues, satire, commentary, and irony so well," he says on the latest episode of the Classical Post podcast.
"It's really a piece about the power of faith to transcend one's physical circumstances and to provide hope in a situation that's otherwise hopeless. How faith can connect people who otherwise would not even see eye to eye ... Whereas we often think of differences in faith as causing friction, it can actually provide a source of commonality and healing."
Abels, who has received incredible accolades for his genre-defying film work — most notably his scores for Jordan Peele's Get Out and Us — brings that same sense of wide musical exploration to Omar, which The New York Times hailed as "an unforced ideal of American sound: expansive and ever-changing."
In this conversation, we discuss more about Omar and Abels' collaboration with Giddens, and take a deep dive into his creative process, in which he strives to be "both a channel and a recipient of ideas." Plus, he shares how architecture inspires his composing, the ways a daily bike ride can be good for the soul and the body, and his favorite restaurant in Los Angeles for traditional Italian cuisine.
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