Opera Over the Decades

Giddens began playing the banjo roughly four years after finishing her opera degree from the Oberlin Conservatory of Music. She acknowledges that these two musical endeavors seem hard to reconcile, and the resonance is often clouded in articles about her musical progression. However broad her musical interests span, her work is not eclectic. She reminds us that everything in music is connected; each sound is informed from the music and rhythms that came before. In the same way, each of Giddens' interests lead to one another. She puts everything into what is in front of her, and practices the grace of moving on when it's her time. She has expressed that she studied opera because at that moment, she wanted to be an opera singer. "Nothing is lost in education," she said in a lunchtime interview with professor Jan Miyake, meaning that her time as an opera singer was a necessary step in her musical development, not a mistake. [1]

She reflects on the clear path of her musical progression while also recalling the frustration. In 2018, she quipped, "[Upon leaving Oberlin, I was] vaguely unsatisfied but thoroughly trained in how to wear a corset and sing very nice high notes." [2] After Oberlin, she asked herself of opera, "what am I adding to this conversation that hasn't already been said?" She realized she didn't have anything more to add to opera, and saw it as a good sign to move on. Of course, everything is cyclical. Twenty years after her reckoning with her Oberlin education, Giddens co-composed the opera, "Omar," which premieres in 2021. [3]  "Omar" is her first operatic role since Oberlin, and her first time composing the script and music of an opera. The opera is based on the autobiography of Omar ben Saeed, a Fullah Muslim scholar, who was enslaved in Virginia in the early 1800s. [4] Truly, nothing is lost in learning. Instead, Giddens uses her skills to bring forward lost stories and share them broadly.

[1] "OBERLIN STAGE LEFT: An Evening with Rhiannon Giddens.", performance by Rhiannon Giddens, and Francesco Turrisi. 2020.

[2]  Giddens, Rhiannon. "Lights in the Valley." Oxford American, Nov 20, 2018, https://www.oxfordamerican.org/magazine/item/1637-lights-in-the-valley.

[3] "Omar, A World Premiere Opera in 2021.", https://spoletousa.org/a-world-premiere-in-2021/.

[4] ben Saeed, Omar. The Life of Omar Ben Saeed, Called Morro, a Fullah Slave in Fayetteville, N.C. Owned by Governor Owen. , Library of Congress, 1831, https://www.loc.gov/resource/amedsaid1831.dw042/?sp=22.