Shadowlight

Libretto by Emily Anderson
Score by Larry Delinger

Marble City Opera 2020 – World Premiere

Director: Kathryn Frady and James Marvel
Lighting Designer: Liv Jin
Projection Designer: Joe Payne

“Beauford Delaney became a famous modernist painter in New York during the Harlem Renaissance in the 1930’s and 40’s and for abstract expressionism following his move to Paris in the 1950’s. Beauford had many famous friends including James Baldwin who called Beauford his mentor and spiritual guide. This opera explores Beauford’s sexuality, art, and schizophrenia.  We begin and end at his funeral where James Baldwin is delivering his eulogy. Through the middle of the opera we are in Paris, St. Anne’s Hospital for the insane, where Beauford spent the last part of his life.While we encounter Beauford in the asylum we experience his journey through his eyes. He remembers first moving to Boston, New York, and Paris. He remembers friends, parties, Knoxville, and his mother, but mostly we see him go in and out of pain. We experience the voices tormenting him, and watch him silence them through his painting.  In the urban dictionary Shadowlight means a shadow produced by projection of light rather than an absence of it. Unlike a typical shadow which is frequently associated with a person bringing their personal darkness into a positive environment, shadowlight is associated with a person bringing their light, their positivity, into a dower environment. For me this definition describes Beauford perfectly!  In our production we use projections to help tell Beauford’s story of darkness and light. The voices play different characters that Beauford once knew, but they are all in his imagination now as he lives out his life in the asylum trying to calm the voices.” – Kathryn Frady

Review: The marvelously immersive video image design taken from Delaney’s paintings was by Joe Payne. – Alan Sherrod, Arts Knoxville article link
Review: Noted by Opera Wire as one of the Top 6 Operas to see in February 2020