Since its early days, the Cedar Rapids Opera has sought to add original works to their repertoire.
“I started the company 25 years ago,” said Dr. Daniel Kleinknecht, the opera’s founder, who still serves as artistic director. “It was an idea I had, kind of because in the ’80s, ’90s, so many of my friends had died of AIDS and a couple of my friends who were tenors passed away and I was fumbling about [for] a way to make life meaningful ….
“In our third year [as an opera] we produced a piece called Too Many Sopranos … a two-act comic opera that has really gotten a lot of performances.”
The latest commissioned piece from the opera, titled Charlie and the Wolf, comes this weekend as part of the company’s annual Juneteenth celebration. On Sunday at 1 p.m., the Englert Theatre in Iowa City will host a performance, followed by a Monday show at 1 p.m. at the Cedar Rapids Public Library.
Though Charlie and the Wolf was performed for area schools in January, these stagings represent the public premiere of this new work commissioned by the opera. The 40-minute piece tells the fanciful story of 20th century jazz saxophonist Charlie Parker meeting the 18th century classical composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.
“I teach a lot of students and I have some younger students as well …. They’re so whimsical and — I won’t say illogical, but their rules are a bit different than adults’ rules,” said the opera’s composer, Dave Ragland Jr., of crafting a show for a younger audience. “What would happen if these two different musicians we don’t associate with each other could come together and actually teach a musical lesson? That’s what happens with Charlie and the Wolf, kind of a play on Peter and the Wolf but Charlie Parker and ‘the wolf’ Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.”
The show represents the third time the Cedar Rapids Opera has celebrated Juneteenth. After the opera contacted Ragland, a four-time Emmy-nominated composer, to create a new work, Ragland subsequently brought on playwright and actor Mary McCallum to do the opera’s libretto.
Both Nashville-based artists had been familiar with each other’s work prior to their first collaboration in 2020 when they worked on Nashville Opera’s One Vote Won. Though McCallum has done plays like Fly, Girl! and films like The 70% Club, that was the first time McCallum had worked on an opera.
“The first time, I didn’t really know what to expect,” McCallum said. “I took it as, I just need to tell the story, it’s just a different format of telling the story.”
In the show a student, Logan, laments school starting so early, having to lug her backpack around, being required to sit in an uncomfortable chair and attend a music class. Though the show starts very much in the musical style of a Mozart-esque opera, Ragland mixes in music reminiscent of Parker’s jazz. Eventually, Mozart and Parker introduce themselves to Logan.
As these two characters are introduced, they educate Logan about their own histories. For McCallum, who only knew the broad strokes for both figures going into this project, the project was an opportunity to read up on them as she put together the libretto.
“We talk about a lot of the things they would have faced, especially with Charlie, the racism that he would have faced even just to learn music,” McCallum said. “So to have these totally different times, these totally different economic circumstances, at some point they’re like, ‘Hey, I think if we’d known each other we would have been friends.’ I like that as a cool moment in the opera.”
In 2021, the Cedar Rapids Opera staged a concert and awarded Iowa-born singer Simon Estes with a lifetime achievement award. Last year was likewise a concert, held in Cedar Rapids’ Czech Village.
For Kleinknecht, it was important to commission Black artists to create a new work that will allow young viewers to see a familiar point of view represented on the opera stage.
“We wanted to commission a non-white person to get a perspective and to sort of make sure that we’re not a very homogeneous state, certainly becoming less and less welcoming for people that are not white,” he said.
Both upcoming stagings of Charlie and the Wolf will be free to attend.
