Soprano, composer, and educator Carmen Bell, founder of Authentic Opera Company, is presenting a new one-act opera at Kalamazoo College's Festival Playhouse on June 19 at 7 p.m. It's a Juneteenth performance of Tangled Roots, a work that sets firsthand accounts from formerly enslaved people to a sweeping range of Black American music, from spirituals and gospel to classical, jazz and spoken word.
The project began when Bell discovered an HBO documentary about the Federal Writers Project, a Depression-era government program that dispatched writers across the South to record the memories of slavery survivors. Moved by what she heard, she started incorporating those narratives into concert performances alongside music. But something was still missing. "Opera tells stories," Bell says, drawing on her classical training at Western Michigan University and Eastern Michigan University. "I feel like sometimes there's a disconnect when we say the word opera, where people have this stereotypical or stigma to it, when opera, in its heyday, was really for everyone." That conviction became the foundation for Tangled Roots.
Co-composer and pianist Rufus Ferguson, who joined the project after years of friendship and musical collaboration with Bell, says the work fills a genuine gap. "We decided to really curate this opera that highlights all the facets of Black American music," Ferguson explains, describing how he, Bell, and cellist Jordan Hamilton drew from spirituals, jazz harmony, classical approaches, and improvisation to build the score. Hamilton is known for his boundary-pushing solo work integrating electronics and voice.
Bell structured the libretto around five scenes, moving from early life through labor, freedom, Juneteenth, and finally a present-day resolve. She was deliberate in selecting narratives that reflect the range of perspectives among those who lived through slavery — some marked by humor, others by grief, and others by a complicated peace. Actor Bianca Washington, a Western Michigan University-trained performer and a co-founder of Face Off Theatre, portrays Mary Reynolds, a real woman who lived to be roughly 100 years old. "She [...] gives an account of when she was born and the household that she was in and gives a very vivid picture," Washington says of her character's three monologues.
The production is a partnership between Bell's Authentic Opera Company and Face Off Theatre, with support from the Arcus Center for Social Justice Leadership. The cast also includes Detroit Opera artist Travis Williams, spoken word performer Ed Genesis, and Western Michigan University student Xavier Bolden.
Tickets and information are available at authenticoperacompany.com.
The interview was summarized by Claude AI and edited by the author.
