GOOD BONES, a New Opera by Michael Abels and James Ijames, to Premiere at Cincinnati Opera

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The Pulitzer Prize-winning team of Michael Abels and James Ijames will create the new work for the Black Opera Project.

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Cincinnati Opera has announced Good Bones, a new American opera with music by Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Michael Abels and libretto by Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright James Ijames , as the third and final work in The Black Opera Project, completing a trilogy of commissioned world premieres dedicated to centering Black joy, resilience, and creativity on the opera stage. With humor, heart, and unflinching honesty, Good Bones follows a young couple renovating a historic home in a historically Black neighborhood within an up-and-coming city, compelling them to contend with spirits past and present. Good Bones will receive its world premiere in Summer 2028 at Cincinnati Music Hall.

Cincinnati Opera's Black Opera Project is a first-of-its-kind initiative, creating three original, full-length operas across three successive years that celebrate the richness of the Black American experience. Announced in 2024 with initial support from the Mellon Foundation, The Black Opera Project represents an overall financial commitment of approximately $6 million, made possible through the Mellon gift and a group of visionary donors. Its three new works span a remarkable range of artistic vision: an Afrofuturist epic (Lalovavi, July 2026), a tribute to a Civil Rights icon ( John Lewis : Good Trouble, June 2027), and now, a contemporary story of homecoming, community, and belonging (Good Bones, Summer 2028).

“We launched The Black Opera Project to illuminate dimensions of the Black American experience that have not yet been represented by our art form,” said Evans Mirageas, Cincinnati Opera's Harry T. Wilks Artistic Director. “With Good Bones, we conclude the Project's three-year arc with a relatable, heartfelt—and occasionally haunted—story about a young Black couple adapting to the changing world around them and rediscovering the meaning of community. We're thrilled to have Michael Abels and James Ijames join the roster of brilliant creators and performers whose work will come to life at Music Hall over the next three summers.”

Good Bones features music by Abels with a libretto by Ijames, based on Ijames's play of the same name, and will be staged by veteran theatre and opera director Timothy Douglas , with Kelly Kuo conducting.

The Story: Aisha and her husband Travis have moved back to her childhood neighborhood, a historically Black community in a post-industrial city on the rise, to renovate a beautiful old house and start fresh. But the neighborhood has changed, and Aisha's homecoming is more complicated than she expected. Their contractor, Earl—a craftsman who grew up on the same streets and never left—becomes an unlikely mirror, forcing Aisha to reckon with her feelings about the place that shaped her. Haunting it all is Sister Bernice, the first Black woman on city council and the house's original owner, whose spirit moves through the walls. By turns funny, tender, and raw, Good Bones asks what we owe the places and people that made us, and what it means to find home.

Michael Abels is a Pulitzer Prize-winning and Emmy- and Grammy-nominated composer best known for his genre-defying scores for Jordan Peele 's films Get Out, Us, and Nope. His stage work includes Omar, the opera co-composed with Grammy-winning recording artist Rhiannon Giddens , which won the 2023 Pulitzer Prize and was named by The New York Times as one of the Best Classical Performances of 2022. Other works include the choral song cycle At War with Ourselves for the Kronos Quartet, and the Grammy-nominated Isolation Variation for violinist Hilary Hahn. Abels's compositions have also been performed by the New York Philharmonic, the Chicago Symphony, the Los Angeles Master Chorale, and many others. He is co-founder of the Composers Diversity Collective, an advocacy group to increase visibility of composers of color in film, gaming, and streaming media. Abels's concert and operatic works are published by Subito Music Corporation.

James Ijames is a Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright, director, and educator whose plays have been produced on Broadway, off-Broadway, and across the country by theaters including The National Black Theatre , The Public Theater , and Steppenwolf Theatre. He was also a founding member of Orbiter 3, Philadelphia's first playwright producing collective. His many awards and honors include the 2017 Whiting Award, the 2019 Kesselring Prize, the 2020 Steinberg Prize, and the 2022 Pulitzer Prize for Drama for Fat Ham, which received a Tony nomination for Best Play. He is an associate professor at Columbia University, where he serves as head of the playwriting concentration. Good Bones is based on his play of the same name, which was originally commissioned by Studio Theatre in Washington, D.C. (David Muse, Artistic Director; Rebecca Ende Lichtenberg, Managing Director), where it premiered in 2023, followed by its New York premiere production in 2024 at The Public Theater ( Oskar Eustis , Artistic Director; Patrick Willingham , Executive Director). This adaptation marks his debut as an opera librettist.

Lalovavi, the first commissioned work in The Black Opera Project, will receive its world premiere on July 9 and 11, 2026, at Cincinnati Music Hall, marking the launch of this historic initiative. The opera features music by Kevin Day and a libretto by Tifara Brown, with stage direction and dramaturgy by Kimille Howard, and Kevin miller on the podium as conductor.

The Story: Set 400 years into the future, Lalovavi (lah-low-VAH-vee) is an Afrofuturist adventure that follows Persephone, the youngest daughter of the ruler of Atlas, the city formerly known as Atlanta. Currency and status in Atlas are determined based on the presence of Syndica, a gene that promotes vitality and longevity. When Persephone is found to possess a version of Syndica that confers immortality, she is betrayed by her family and must run for her life. She is thrust into an epic journey, uncovering a hidden past that leads her to discover love's true meaning and the power to determine her destiny. Lalovavi is the first opera to incorporate Tut, a language created by enslaved Black Americans to communicate in secret; “lalovavi” is the Tut word for “love.”

Kevin Day is an award-winning, multi-disciplinary composer, jazz pianist, and conductor based in Las Vegas, Nevada. His works have been commissioned and performed by some of the world's top instrumental soloists and ensembles, including Cincinnati Opera, the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, Houston Symphony Orchestra, Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra, New Jersey Symphony, Las Vegas Philharmonic, Tokyo Kosei Wind Orchestra, and the “President's Own” U.S. Marine Band, U.S. Army Band, U.S. Navy Band, and U.S. Air Force Band, among many others across the U.S., Canada, Austria, Taiwan, South Africa, Australia, and Japan. Lalovavi marks his debut as an operatic composer. His second opera, For the Love of Uvalde (based on the acclaimed play by librettist Dr. Ayvaunn Penn), is a chamber opera commissioned by the Texas Christian University College of Fine Arts and Urban Arts Initiative, premiering in 2027.

Tifara Brown is a performance poet, oral historian, published author, activist, and organizational culture strategist with roots in Southern Georgia. She is the founder of Honeysuckle Poetry LLC and Creative Director of Honeysuckle Studios, a creative direction and organizational culture practice whose work sits at the intersection of art, ancestral memory, and institutional transformation. She self-published Honeysuckle: Poems and Stories from a Black Southerner as a memorial to one of her ancestors who was killed by racial violence in the late 1950s. Her poetry has been widely published in Gulf Stream Literary Magazine, Sunspot Literary Journal, Cathexis Northwest Press, Quartz Literary, Minerva Rising Press, Main Street Rag Publishing Company, and numerous other literary journals and anthologies. Lalovavi marks her debut as an opera librettist. More information is available at www.tifarabrown.com .

John Lewis : Good Trouble, the second commissioned work in The Black Opera Project, will receive its world premiere in June 2027. The opera features music by Maria Thompson Corley and a libretto by Diana Solomon-Glover, with stage direction and dramaturgy by Good Bones director Timothy Douglas , and conducted by Everett McCorvey .

The Story: John Lewis : Good Trouble chronicles the remarkable life of U.S. Congressman John Lewis , a towering figure in the Civil Rights Movement. The opera interweaves Lewis's personal story with the broader struggles of the time, capturing the essence of his unwavering commitment to love, nonviolence, and justice. Spanning Lewis's humble beginnings in Troy, Alabama, through the tumultuous events that shaped the movement, the opera delves into issues of race, humanity, and the moral imperative to rise above division, underscoring an enduring message of hope and urging each generation to continue the fight for equality.

Maria Thompson Corley is a composer, arranger, pianist, educator, poet, author, voice actor, and recording artist. She has performed on stages across North and Central America, the Caribbean, and Europe. Her compositions and arrangements span art song, choral and solo vocal music, chamber music, spirituals, and opera and have been commissioned by ensembles and institutions worldwide. In addition to John Lewis : Good Trouble, her operas include the The Sky Where You Are, commissioned by An Opera Theatre in 2020; The Place, commissioned by Lyric Opera of the North, which premiered in 2021; the children's opera The Fox and the Cookie, which premiered at UTEP in 2023, and Dragonfly, commissioned by Manitoba Opera. Her recordings appear on Naxos, Albany, Navona Records, and MSR Classics.

Diana Solomon-Glover is a journalist, singer, and librettist whose artistry has been dedicated to telling stories of unsung American heroes through opera. Her collaboration with composer Chandler Carter, This Little Light of Mine, an opera about Civil Rights activist Fannie Lou Hamer, premiered at Santa Fe Opera in 2022, with subsequent performances at Kentucky Opera in 2025 and the HBCU Opera and Musical Theater Summer Festival in 2027. Inspired by relics from the 127th US Colored Troops, she and composer Carlos Castro created The Promise for Atlanta Opera's inaugural 96-Hour Opera Project. Solomon-Glover is co-owner of Reduta Deux, a not-for-profit producing theatrically innovative works reflecting broad human consciousness.

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_Originally reported by [BroadwayWorld](https://www.broadwayworld.com/bwwopera/article/GOOD-BONES-to-Make-World-Premiere-at-Cincinnati-Opera-20260610)._