avery r. young reimagines opera in world premiere "safronia"

Inside Chicago’s grand Lyric Opera House, world-class singing is a given. What is far more rare in that vaunted venue, however, is an audience clapping and dancing along. But avery r. young has made that kind of enthusiasm the stated goal for his upcoming world premiere, “safronia.”

“This is unlike any opera you have ever seen in your life and you don’t have to think it is improper to have a good time,” said young, 51, who forgoes capital letters for both his own name and those of his characters. “Our job is to not be the only people in the theater clapping and rocking. We shouldn’t feel successful until that happens.”

Young’s mainstage debut, which will close Lyric’s season, follows the booker family, who have been banished from their land in Mississippi and forced to move north as part of the Great Migration. During that period in the 20th century, an estimated 6 million Black Americans resettled in northern cities — like Chicago, Detroit and New York — in an attempt to find new opportunities and escape the discrimination of the Jim Crow era.

Young’s tale is loosely based on his own family history, although he notes, “it is not a documentary.” Instead, this work is his attempt to tell a specific story about a time period that is often perceived as a monolith. And, by bringing notes of blues, funk and gospel to the Lyric stage, young is boldly asking: What exactly is opera? He hopes this production — which runs April 17-18 — will help redefine the answer. And, throw open the doors of the opera house to new audiences and new kinds of storytelling.

“There are gonna be folks who are like, ‘This is not opera.’ And I'm going to say, ‘But, why not?’ From everything that I've studied opera to be, this is exactly what an opera is,” said young. “It doesn't sound like [‘The Marriage of Figaro’], but this music was built to communicate what a person is going through.”

Young, a native of the city’s West Side, is perhaps best known for being Chicago’s first-ever poet laureate, a role he held until late last year. Any time spent in young’s orbit makes clear what a creative force he is as a multi-hyphenate artist with seemingly endless energy.

On a recent day backstage at Lyric, he sports a denim jacket, camo pants and sneakers, as he recounts how this collaboration began. During the COVID-19 pandemic, young worked with the company as a librettist and performer for “Twilight: Gods,” a drive-through Wagner adaptation presented in an underground parking garage.

After that run, Lyric’s then-general director, Anthony Freud, who retired in 2024, asked young if there was a story he was interested in developing. At Freud’s encouragement, young began writing not only the libretto for “safronia,” but also the score, despite, as he puts it, not being a “proper musician.”

“I cannot, to this day, sit at a piano or strum a guitar, what I can do is kind of beatbox and hum,” said young, who immediately began reciting a beat. “That's how I construct a song and that's how I constructed this whole opera.”

Young will also appear on stage as baar booker, the family’s patriarch. Other cast members include Chicago’s own Meagan McNeal playing the titular safronia booker, the family’s loyal youngest daughter; Broadway actor Maiesha McQueen as the steady matriarch, magnolia booker; and Jeff Award-winner Lorenzo Rush Jr. who portrays safronia’s husband, king willie tate. All three singers — along with the show’s director, Timothy Douglas (who directed the opera “She Who Dared” last year in Chicago) — are making their Lyric debut.

The concert-style show, which has the energy of a Sunday church service, is billed as a mix of folklore, poetry and history. The Lyric orchestra appears on stage, alongside members of young’s blues and funk ensemble, de deacon board. Together, the sound is an intricate mixture of strings, winds and brass with electric bass, organ and harmonica, courtesy of the Grammy-nominated Blues legend, Billy Branch.

Young said he wanted it to sound like, “you're walking down Chicago Avenue and you stumble upon a church where Curtis Mayfield is conducting Parliament-Funkadelic, but Mavis [Staples] and her sisters and daddy are singing. That's what I wanted to make the world.”

“safronia” draws its name both from young’s grandmother and as a nod to Nina Simone’s “Four Women.” The production is Lyric’s latest attempt to expand beyond the classical opera repertoire in order to reach younger and more diverse audiences. Last fall, the company teamed up with Smashing Pumpkins frontman Billy Corgan for a reimagined presentation of the band’s seminal album, “Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness.” The seven-show run was completely sold out and company leadership has high hopes for “safronia.”

“I really support avery’s work with all my heart,” Enrique Mazzola, Lyric’s music director, said last spring when the company announced the work. “When I think about what is the future of American opera, this is a possible answer.”

The story begins years after banishment, when the family returns to the South to give their patriarch a proper burial and face the forces that drove them away. But despite the heaviness of the storyline, the music is often quick and punchy. At an early workshop, one singer asked young, “Why do they sound so happy?”

“I said, well, I don't think we're at the right H word. The song's not fast because they're happy. The song is fast because they're in a hurry,” young said. “One of the things that I wanted to also convey with this music is: Despite the hardships that this family endures, they rock and roll through it.”

While they may be resilient, young is not rewriting history. The show sits squarely in the struggles and continued discrimination that Black families endured once they reached cities like Chicago.

“They used the Green Book to get red-lined,” young said, referring to the guidebook that alerted Black travelers to hotels and restaurants they were safe to patronize and the systemic discrimination that kept many Black families from buying homes. The trauma of that period had lasting effects on young’s family, including his grandmother, for whom the show is named.

“She never came to grips with the circumstances that led them to have to leave where they were from,” young said, noting that the pain of forced migration is something many populations globally can relate to. “I think she would be proud that I didn't give her this ‘well, all ended well’ [story], because it didn't.”

It was that unvarnished rawness that first attracted young to opera (and why he says Bonnie Raitt’s “I Can’t Make You Love Me” is his favorite song). He saw a show from the Baroque period in high school and the universality of the story struck him immediately. Sitting in the theater, he said he thought, “Oh, my goodness, these women around this well is like my aunties when they were sitting at the table playing cards or cooking. It's the same thing.”

As young prepares to bring his story to life, it already has legs beyond Lyric. Last week, Chicago’s Court Theatre announced that “safronia” will close its next season in spring 2027, when the work will be reimagined as a fully-staged production.

But still, young hopes these hometown showings are just the beginning — and that someday “safronia” will travel the same path that his ancestors did during the Great Migration and be shown at opera houses from the South to the North.

Courtney Kueppers is an arts and culture reporter at WBEZ.