The Baldwin Wallace Conservatory Opera Presents “A. E. Reverie” and “Rise”

The award-winning Baldwin Wallace Conservatory Opera and the Cleveland Museum of Art present a double bill of chamber operas that highlight the pioneering American spirit of determination, independence, and freedom. 

A. E. Reverie, a 15-minute chamber opera (composed by Kamala Sankaram with the libretto by Jerre Dye), is paired with Rise, a 30-minute chamber opera (composed by Sankaram with the libretto by A. M. Homes) commissioned by Washington National Opera as part of a collection of operas titled Written in Stone to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Kennedy Center in 2021. The Midwest premiere of these two operas also features the world premiere of a new chamber orchestration commissioned for this Baldwin Wallace Conservatory Opera production.

A. E. Reverie is set in 1929, a year after Amelia Earhart, also known as the “First Lady of Aviation,” completed her trans-Atlantic flight. After Earhart’s triumphant landing and empowering amphitheater lecture, her words attributing the gender disparity in aviation to gender-based education practices without regard to individual aptitudes inspires a young woman to realize the American dream of freedom and to reach new heights herself.

Rise pays tribute to the little-known Portrait Monument in Washington, DC. Completed in 1921, the monument depicts three key players in the women’s suffragist movement—Lucretia Mott, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Susan B. Anthony—together with a fourth, uncarved face, as a sign that the feminist struggle was far from over at the time. Indeed, it was only in 1997 that the statue itself was restored to its place in the US Capitol’s rotunda, after being consigned to the building’s crypt for the preceding 75 years. 

In this magical-realist take, Alicia Hernández, a Girl Scout, becomes lost while on a Capitol tour and encounters a powerful female politician, a friendly Capitol Police officer, and the ghost of American sculptor Adelaide Johnson. Through a witty conversation and revelatory interactions between the young Hernández and the opera’s all-female, time-traveling cast of characters, Rise gives voice to some of the many women and girls who find their stories missing from history. 

The views expressed by performers during this event are their own and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the Cleveland Museum of Art.