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A Synopsis of the Opera
His spirit, both surprised and inspired, now stands in this new Birdland. Here,
he will create his final masterpiece. He is interrupted by Nica, his friend, who
appears frantically in search of his wife Chan, so she can tell her Charlie is
dead. Charlie needs all the time available to write. Nica, on the other hand,
needs Chan to claim Charlie’s body and end the potential nightmare of the
press announcing that he has died in her hotel suite forcing the hotel to evict
her.
Charlie tries to write but the notes will not stay on the paper. As a master
of improvisation, Charlie long realized that the twelve semitones of the
chromatic scale could lead melodically to any key, freeing musicians from
the twelve bar blues.
Needing a new freedom, Charlie is visited and inspired by people who
have meant much in his life. With the inspiration of his strong mother Addie,
three of his four wives, Rebecca, Doris, and Chan, and his partner in the jazz
revolution that was bebop, Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker will struggle to calm
his demons and write his new masterpiece before his body is identified in the
morgue and this gig is up forever.
Can he do it or will the demons of his past rear their ugly heads? Will he
succumb to heroin or alcohol, or is he just too tired and sick to go on? Will
he channel the strength and love of his mother, a woman who worked
long hours to give him everything she could? He was her only child. Did she
mother him too much or will he honor her with a new masterpiece? He left his
first wife Rebecca with an infant son nearly 15 years earlier. Can she forgive
him?
Charlie will bravely revisit Camarillo State Mental Hospital, a purgatory,
searching for inspiration and healing. Will he find it and will he be able to
forgive himself for the death of his daughter Pree, whom he could not save?
Can her forgiveness save him? This opera searches for the music in dreams
deferred and the power of redemption.
We proudly close the opera with “I know why the caged bird sings,” the last
stanza from “Sympathy,” a poem by Paul Laurence Dunbar (1872-1906),
understanding and acknowledging both the struggle and triumph of Charlie
Parker.
c. Dominic M. Mercier - Opera Philadelphia
< > CONTENTSBaritone Will Liverman as Dizzy Gillespie and tenor Lawrence Brownlee as Charlie Parker