Opera Theatre of Saint Louis (OTSL) has unveiled a riveting lineup
of world premieres for the 2025 New Works Collective. Marking its
third year of a three-year commissioning cycle, the highly lauded
New Works Collective stands as a catalyst for innovative,
community-driven programming within the American opera scene. This
initiative solicited nationwide applications from aspiring
creatives before submitting all entries to a community panel for
adjudication. A group of ten St. Louis citizens independently
interviewed and selected the six artists who will create new operas
in 2025.The three teams are made up of composer
Concert
Black and librettist
Alicia Revé Like,
composer
Meilina Tsui and
librettist
Melisa Tien, and composer
Tim
Amukele and librettist
Jarrod Lee. They will
work closely with a stage director and collaborate with OTSL’s
artistic leadership and staff to develop and workshop their
20-minute operas. All three pieces will then be performed as one
suite of works on Feb. 6–8, 2025.
“It’s been a delight to see the boundaries of
opera expand and grow these past two years, and we couldn’t be more
excited about going into the third year with such an incredible
team of creators,” said Andrew Jorgensen, General Director. “It
will be our honor to bring their stories to our stage and share
them with our community. On behalf of the entire organization, I
want to extend our utmost gratitude to the St. Louis community
members who served on this year’s selection panel; their
thoughtfulness and care in choosing this cohort was remarkable. Our
deepest thanks also go to the Mellon Foundation and the Edward
Jones Foundation. Without their support, none of this would be
possible. We’re grateful for their belief in our mission of making
opera accessible for all.”
About the 2025 Cohort of the New Works
Collective
The first work of the 2025 New Works Collective is
by composer Concert Black and
librettist Alicia Revé Like. Their work will tell
the story of Makena, a millennial Black woman struggling with
loneliness. As she adjusts to life in a new city, Makena searches
for friendship across book clubs, cooking classes, and
beyond.
Concert Black is a violinist, violist,
and composer from North County, St. Louis. He has served school
districts throughout St. Louis since 2017 as a music teacher and is
currently the Director of Orchestras at Ritenour High School and
Co-Chair of the E. Desmond Lee Festival Orchestra. His compositions
have won awards from Chamber Project St. Louis, where he is a
member of the Composer Incubator Program, as well as the St. Louis
Underground Music Festival. In summer 2023, Concert Black premiered
multiple pieces with the American Modern Ensemble with the Mostly
Modern Festival in Saratoga Springs,
NY. Librettist Alicia
Revé Like is a St. Louis-based actor, singer,
songwriter, and director. Her passion for storytelling has led to
collaborations with various arts organizations including the St.
Louis Symphony Orchestra, The Muny, The Black Rep, COCA, The
Repertory Theatre of St. Louis, and Metro Theater Company. In 2017,
Like received a Theatre Circle Award for Supporting Actress in a
Drama. As an independent artist, Like has written and composed
music and created intimate concerts, both virtually and in-person,
in the hopes of allowing people a space to connect, relate, and be
seen.
The second opera in the 2025 New Works Collective
is by composer Meilina Tsui and
librettist Melisa Tien. Their opera tells the story of
a Chinese father and daughter as they navigate life in
America. As the teen daughter reaches for the seemingly
unreachable prospect of college, her father is determined to help
make her dreams come true.
Meilina Tsui is a
Kazakhstan-born, Hong Kong-American composer, pianist, and
educator. Her music uniquely combines elements of East Asian,
Central Asian, and Western cultures. Tsui was recently awarded the
OPERA America’s Opera Grant for Women Composers, the ASCAP
Foundation Morton Gould Young Composer Award, and the University of
Michigan ProQuest Distinguished Dissertation Award. She is the
composer of the opera The Big Swim, commissioned by Houston
Grand Opera in partnership with Asia Society Texas Center, and is a
recipient of the 2024 Virginia B. Toulmin Foundation Orchestral
Commissions. New York City-based
librettist Melisa Tien is a playwright, lyricist,
and opera librettist invested in making formally unconventional,
socially relevant, and emotionally evocative work. A resident
writer of New Dramatists, she is the librettist of
operas Family Heirloom (Experiments in Opera,
2024), The Big Swim (Houston Grand Opera,
2024), Forever (Washington National Opera,
2024), Song of the Nightingale (On Site Opera, 2023),
and The Beehive (University of Northern Iowa, 2023), and
lyricist of the song cycles Swell (HERE, 2021)
and Daylight Saving.
Closing out the 2025 New Works Collective are
composer Tim Amukele and librettist Jarrod
Lee. Their opera is based on the true story of Amanirenas, the
one-eyed queen who ruled the kingdom of Kush (modern-day Sudan) for
decades. During her reign, Amanirenas did what few other rulers
could: she resisted a Roman invasion, fought alongside her troops,
and successfully preserved the independence of her
nation.
Tim Amukele is a medical doctor, in
addition to a composer and arranger of vocal music. His commissions
include “I Will Rise” by the New York Chapter of the National
Association of Negro Musicians; “What Sweeter Music,” a Christmas
cantata by the Queen Anne Methodist Church; “Stand the Storm” for
the American Spiritual Ensemble; and Spirit Moves, a community
opera for the IN Series opera company in Washington, D.C. In 2023
he wrote Madman, a song cycle based on the parables of Khalil
Gibran. Librettist Jarrod Lee’s work is influenced by
his experience of being Black, gay, and American, adding to the
canon of operas written by Black librettists. Past commissions
include works for Alliance for New Music Theatre, IN Series, Finger
Lakes Opera, and Washington National Opera. Collaborations
include Journey to You and Spirit Moves with
Dr. Timothy Amukele, Oshun and Two Corners with
B.E. Boykin, Voices of Zionwith Ronald Walton, and Black
Flute with playwright Sybil Roberts in a deconstruction
of The Magic Flute with English translations.
About the New Works CollectiveFirst
announced in February 2022, Opera Theatre’s New Works Collective
disrupts the traditional commissioning model for opera companies by
giving decision-making power to its community through a collective
of St. Louis residents. In establishing the collective, OTSL
intentionally sought out individuals from backgrounds historically
underrepresented in opera, including a mix of artists, arts
leaders, storytellers, activists, and community advisors who reach
far beyond classical music.The collective has selected three
projects each year from 2023–2025 for OTSL to develop, workshop,
and premiere. The New Works Collective brings new voices to the
creative process and creates community partnerships that extend
beyond a single project or production. The full list of New Works
Collective panelists can be found
at ExperienceOpera.org/NWCPanel.The first two years of the New
Works Collective have proven a critical success, with tickets in
high demand and glowing reviews from the press. BroadwayWorld.com
wrote of the 2023 New Works Collective, “I’ve never seen an evening
of opera that so toweringly rose above my expectations.” These
performances continue to bring in higher-than-average numbers of
new audiences for Opera Theatre, a testament to the power that new
voices and stories have in uniting different segments of the
community through art. Leadership support for the New Works
Collective comes from the Mellon Foundation and
the Edward Jones Foundation.
***
About Opera Theatre of Saint
Louis Opera Theatre of Saint Louis is a spring festival
featuring casts of the opera world’s most exciting singers
accompanied by the acclaimed St. Louis Symphony Orchestra. Each
season, OTSL presents four inventive new productions in English
during the months of May and June. In addition to presenting
innovative interpretations of classics, OTSL is also committed to
premiering new and relevant operas by prominent composers; since
its inaugural season in 1976, 39 operas have premiered at Opera
Theatre. Opera Theatre’s competitive young artist programs foster
the next generation of emerging singers; these programs have been a
springboard for countless artists to launch international careers.
OTSL is led by General Director Andrew Jorgensen and Artistic
Director James Robinson in collaboration with Artistic Director of
Young Artist Programs Patricia Racette and Principal Conductor
Daniela Candillari. Opera Theatre of Saint Louis is funded in
part by the National Endowment for the
Arts, Missouri Arts Council, Regional Arts
Commission, and the Arts and Education Council.
Opera Theatre gratefully acknowledges Webster University for its
sustaining partnership.
- 2025 New Works Collective Cohort
Chantal Incandela
Opera Theatre of Saint Louis
(314) 963-4296
cincandela@opera-stl.org