Dr. Justin Vickers, recently named Distinguished Professor of Music in the ISU School of Music, has been commissioned to write two scholarly program essays for the English National Opera (ENO) in London for its 2022-2023 season. The ENO is one of the world’s leading opera companies, and publishes program books alongside each production.
“I have enjoyed attending world-class operas at the English National Opera for years,” Vickers said. “So it has been a real thrill to be asked twice this year to contribute essays for the ENO, especially since the projects are so different and both of them are contemporary American operas.”
Vickers’ program essays are for the London premieres of Jeanine Tesori and Tazewell Thompson’s opera Blue (April 2023), as well as Jake Heggie and Gene Scheer’s opera It’s a Wonderful Life (November/December 2022). The Heggie–Scheer opera portrays heartwarming nostalgia based on the film (and the book on which the film was inspired).
Vickers’s most recent essay is titled: “Joy denied. Surviving ‘one more peaceful protest’: Justin Vickers discusses Tesori and Thompson’s Blue.”
Blue tackles the persistent and endemic tragedy of police brutality. Powerfully, Tesori and Thompson frame their opera through the lens of a young Black family in Harlem in which the father is a police officer: a “Black man in blue.” The son is ultimately murdered by a white police officer.
Justin Vickers writes, “As the opera navigates the twin spaces of grief and trauma, the composer and librettist invite us to a seat around the table, where Father and Son explore reconciliation, all the while seeing the world from two vastly different perspectives.” He noted that “Tesori and Thompson’s opera Blue is one of the masterpieces of 21st century opera—not just for its poignancy, but for the directness with which they tackle systemic racism and heartbreaking, real American inequities.”
