With Highways and Valleys opening the opera season in Detroit, two rarely performed American operas are brought to the fore. Knit together by an exploration of love and Americana in a double bill, the pairing offers a spotlight on the small-town stories often overlooked by the genre.
“When a story gets told in an operatic context, it’s like you’re honoring that thing,” says bass-baritone Davóne Tines of the two works.
Following a tenure as Detroit Opera’s first Artist-in-Residence — and company roles in 2022’s X: The Life and Times of Malcolm X, 2024’s Europeras 4 — Tines returns to the stage in dual roles: villainous businessman Thomas Bouché in Kurt Weill’s Down in the Valley and Bob, an earnest family man in William Grant Still’s Highway 1, USA.
The undeniable thread connecting both works is love, poignantly explored and examined through the lens of an all-Black cast. “There are many ways to talk about a culture beyond its resilience against another culture,” Tines says in reflection of this observation. “And I’m happy that we are telling stories that take Blackness and our everyday experience on its own terms.”
“We don’t fight the fight just to be fighting,” he says. “We fight so that we can have peace and love and joy. Uplifting those aspects of our identity is just as important.”
It’s this peace, love, and joy that audiences get to reckon with in Highway 1, USA, which opens with sharply dressed Br’er Fox and Br’er Rabbit masked characters posed under a tall streetlight. William Grant Still, often called the “Dean of African American composers,” delivers a timeless one-act peek behind the curtains of a working-class home on the brink of a collapsing American dream. The specter that haunts them writes home from college and eventually takes up residence in their spare bedroom. Through Kaneza Schaal’s direction and a dynamic retro kitsch set by Christopher Myers, the love story of Bob and Mary emerges triumphant beneath towering billboards that sell marketing-made dreams of the American way.
On the other side of the bill, German-born Jewish composer Kurt Weill’s Down in the Valley plays out like folklore pulp, serving up a quick and passionate tale of young love gone awry in the Deep South. Its serious tone is bookended and punctuated with soulful dialogue spoken into an old-fashioned microphone for a tube radio story hour effect.
Notably, newcomer and Detroit native Lawrence Mitchell-Matthews, a baritone, makes his Detroit Opera debut embodying morality as the justice-minded Sheriff in Highway 1, USA, and as the pious Preacher in Down in the Valley. Lastly, tying everything together is costume designer Charlese Antoinette, who wields the power of fabric (mostly denim) and hue (muted tones of blue and soft ranges of violet) to tell a clothing story of authenticity and workwear as a hat tip to Detroit’s working-class labor roots.
“I hope that Detroit shows up to see itself reflected inside the house,” says Tines.
Highways and Valleys is playing at Detroit Opera through Dec. 13. Tickets are available at DetroitOpera.org. $25 City of Detroit Resident Rush Tickets are available at the box office the week of the show. Visit DetroitOpera.org/Discounts for details.
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