Review: Marble City Opera Premieres Important Theatre in ‘I Can’t Breathe’

It would be impossible to find a more relevant topic for contemporary theatre than that found in the Marble City Opera production of I Can’t Breathe, a new opera that received its world premiere on Thursday evening at the Beck Cultural Exchange Center. Fueled by this relevancy, the production had been eagerly anticipated in Knoxville, so much so that all three of its premiere performances sold out more than a week in advance. With a music score by Leslie Savoy Burrs and a libretto by MCO’s Managing Director Brandon J. Gibson, the opera explores through vignettes the life and tragedy of six generic, fictional characters—characters that suggest and symbolize participants in the tragic, real-life incidences of police conduct gone horribly wrong—incidences that should have otherwise been an innocent interaction between law enforcement and African Americans…or no interaction at all. Marble City Opera commissioned the work, joined in the commission by a consortium of three other opera companies—Pacific Opera Project, Opera Columbus, and Cleveland Opera Theatre—that will stage their own productions of I Can’t Breathe in the future.

Mr. Gibson’s poetic libretto takes on the six individuals—known only as “The Mother”, “The Athlete”, “The Thug”, “The Scholar”, “The Father”, and “The Lover”— revealing the particulars of the good, the bad, and the humdrum everyday things that define the lives of the characters and makes them relatable. Each character reveal, though, comes to a screeching halt as a fatal encounter with police, an encounter so unnecessary as to defy logic and that cries out with the eternal question: Why?

In addition to Gibson, this MCO production has drawn on a number of current and former Knoxvillians. The conductor of the 10-member ensemble is Garrett McQueen, the former KSO bassoonist and WUOT radio host, who relocated to the Twin Cities area and currently hosts a number of radio programs, as well as a weekly podcast, TRILLOQUY. The stage director is Jonathan Clark, Executive/Artistic Director at The Carpetbag Theatre, Inc.. Knoxvillian Brandon Coffer is the music director and keyboardist for MCO.

The Burrs score is, at once, a curious stylistic mix of contemporary jazz flavors and complex jazz rhythms, with suggestions of gospel and pop effervescences thrown in that flirt with atonality before settling back to earth as part of the composer’s energetic contemporary lyricism. Discovering that one side of Burrs’ career has involved virtuosic jazz and classical flute—and probably copious amounts of improvisation—explains a lot about what the listener hears in this work. Admittedly, the score has moments of episodic indecision. While the work’s signature instrumental density expands and contracts attractively, the dynamics occasionally suggest emotions that seem to be absent from the stage picture. In the close quarters of the non-theatrical venue of the Beck Center, with its acoustically hard and reflective concrete floor and walls, that instrumental density was sometimes able to build and overwhelm all but the most powerful of the singers. A well-sung choral passage in the finale involving the entire cast plus additional chorus singers, however, underlined the work’s important premise with a nicely harmonized rush of emotion.

In the staging by Jonathan Clark, the six singer-characters represented a cross-section of life and the issues of living, just as did the real-life characters they resembled. In “The Mother”, soprano Jayme Alilaw brought crisp diction and a marvelously lyrical voice to her character: a mother looking back on the deciding events in her life while she is busy folding the family laundry—only to receive the always dreaded phone call. Tenor Breyon Ewing was “The Athlete”, a swaggering Everyman coming from a game with a soda and snacks in his pocket. The powerful bass-baritone Jacob Lay was “The Thug”, a guy challenged by his past and lack of early parental support. Tenor Benjamin Burney was “The Scholar”, a new homeowner carrying boxes into his new abode. Baritone Maurice Hendricks was “The Father” packing the family car for a two day trip with his young daughter and his “The Lover” sung by mezzo-soprano Laura Thomason, who must deal with the aftermath—the anger and the helpless feelings of guilt. The three chorus members, Michelle Clayton, Robyn Maker, Teyah Young, plus Avery Clayton as “The Child” rounded out the cast.

Marble City Opera’s I Can’t Breathe is an important, if not essential, operatic commentary in the continuing discussion of what policing is now, and what it should be, in the United States. Coming in with an admittedly long running time of over three hours including intermission, it does make demands on an audience, not only for their time, but also for their hearts, minds, and involvement. It will be interesting to watch the progress of the work as the other commissioning opera companies put their own stamp on it.

Although the final performance of I Can’t Breathe is sold out, tickets to a streaming version that can be viewed all weekend are available here.