This evening, I had the opportunity to the see and hear the opera Omar. It premiered at the Spoleto Festival USA in 2022. It came to Chapel Hill this weekend. What a performance, what a moving piece of artistic genius.
Omar ibn Said was captured in Senegal and enslaved. He was a deeply religious and literate Muslim who wrote Arabic and had studied the Koran for years before his capture. He was originally sold in Charleston, SC and ran away after 3 years -- who wouldn't. He wound up in Fayetteville, NC, where he was jailed and while captive covered the walls of his cell with writings in charcoal. Still a chattel slave, he lived on the Fayetteville plantation of John Owen, a prominent NC planter. He was treated as curiosity and efforts were made to convert him to Christianity. Some of his writings are now part of the NC Collection of UNC's Library.
The opera written through sponsorship of Spoleto and Carolina Performing Arts was brilliantly staged. The music can only be described as fitting the theme perfectly. The libretto was poetic in its simplicity and deeply affecting.
I anticipate that this production will rattle around in my head for some time to come. It was one of those events where you don't want to speak to anyone afterwars lest they break the spell. I was spellbound.