The opera opens in the home of a doting but nervous married couple.
They’re dressed casually — she in a pink nightgown, he in jeans and a flannel — but the mood is anything but.
“A strange car pulled into the driveway the other day,” she sings.
“Keep a backpack by the door,” his reply, also sung. “Keep the children near.”
It’s the morning of the day their fate will be decided in the Supreme Court of the United States of America and the opening scene for the opera “Loving v. Virginia” that will make its world premiere Friday at the Harrison Opera House in Norfolk. Performances are also scheduled for Fairfax on May 3-4 and Richmond on May 9-11.
Mildred, a Black woman, and Richard, a white man, grew up in Caroline County, Virginia, and fell in love. But they could not marry in their home state because of a state law, the Racial Integrity Act of 1924. In the 1950s, Virginia was still one of 16 states prohibiting and punishing marriages on the basis of race. In 1958, Mildred and Richard traveled to Washington, D.C., to get married.
When they returned to Virginia, police raided their home and found the couple in the same bed. The police also found their certificate of marriage.
The Lovings pleaded guilty to violating the anti-miscegenation law, and they were given a choice by the court: go to jail for one year or leave Virginia for the next 25 years.
They chose to leave. They moved to D.C. But they missed their true home.
The opera is a window into the lives of Mildred, played by Flora Hawk, and Richard, played by Jonathan Michie, between 1958 and 1967, at the conclusion of their Supreme Court case — Loving v. Virginia. The 1967 court decision declared the law under which they had been convicted, and laws like them, unconstitutional: State statutes barring interracial marriage violated the due process and equal protection clauses of the 14th Amendment.
Two lawyers from the American Civil Liberties Union, Bernard Cohen, played by Troy Cook, and Philip Hirschkop (Christian Sanders) represented the Lovings after Mildred approached the ACLU in 1963, having grown frustrated about her ability to enter Virginia and see her and her husband’s relatives.
The Virginia Opera and Richmond Symphony commissioned “Loving v. Virginia” in 2022, and produced it with the Minnesota Opera. The world premiere is directed by Denyce Graves-Montgomery. The music was composed by Damien Geter. Jessica Murphy Moo wrote the libretto, the words.
The opera illustrates the universal hope to choose where you live and raise your family, Moo said in an interview.
“It’s a real love story,” she said. “This couple really loved each other, wanted to be married.”
The Lovings were a private couple, humble people. They were compelled by a sense of fairness but were not vocal civil rights activists at the time of their court case. They just really wanted to go home.
To better understand them and their home, Moo, who lives in Portland, Oregon, traveled to Virginia while writing the libretto.
She went to Caroline County, where the Lovings lived, saw the historic courthouse where they endured their first trial, read any personal documents from the couple’s lives she could find and pored over court records.
Ultimately, she and the composer decided to make the law its own character in the show. The Law is portrayed by a chorus of singers — whose faces are obscured to the audience — and helps to explain the legal proceedings. Its song lyrics were pulled from an arrest warrant, court summons and the Constitution.
“That language really is a part of their story and affected their lives so much during that time,” Moo said.
The action is easy to understand. The opera is written in English. The wording is simple, and the Virginia Opera includes a digital screen above the stage that displays the words as they are sung — basically, subtitles.
The music is also accessible, said Michie, who plays Richard and is a career opera singer. The emotions found in the chords and lyrics are easy to discern, even for the classically untrained ear.
“The musical language, that style of music Damien wrote in, it’s orchestral, but it’s modern classical music,” he said in an interview.
The composer pulled inspiration from bluegrass, the blues and gospel. There’s even a little electric guitar in the score.
Colin Warren-Hicks, 919-818-8139, colin.warrenhicks@virginiamedia.com
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If you go
When: 7:30 p.m. Friday, 2:30 p.m. Sunday
Where: Harrison Opera House, 160 W. Virginia Beach Blvd., Norfolk
Tickets: Start at $21.25
Details: vaopera.org
