In Montgomery, Alabama, a statue of Rosa Parks stands just blocks from the state Capitol. At her feet, granite markers memorialize four other women, but the monument offers little else about them.
These women have largely been forgotten, until now. The lesser-known figures who powered the Civil Rights Movement are the subject of a brand-new opera, set to make its world premiere next week in Chicago.
The show, “She Who Dared,” is the first full-length opera from the composer-librettist duo of Jasmine Arielle Barnes and Deborah D.E.E.P. Mouton. Believed to be the first professionally staged opera written by two Black women, the work introduces audiences to the women who, along with Rosa Parks — and in some cases, before her — also refused to give up their seats to white riders on the city’s segregated buses.
Such bold efforts in the 1950s led to the yearlong Montgomery Bus Boycott and eventually, the seminal U.S. Supreme Court case Browder v. Gayle, which officially outlawed segregation on Alabama public transit.
This trailblazing opera about brave women arrives in a new era of political unease, as the Trump administration seeks to weaken enforcement of the Civil Rights Act, slash diversity programs and clamp down on what types of art get public funding. When the opera’s creators started work in 2022, they could not have foreseen the environment in which it would premiere.
But, inspired by their subjects, they are standing tall today.
“I think especially now, this piece carries an importance and message that everyday people can change laws, can challenge the government, can speak up for things that are not right for themselves and others and really make real change,” said Barnes. The 33-year-old, who will soon take up residence in Ann Arbor, Michigan, has risen to prominence both as a singer and as a leading composer of her generation.
A familial tie to the boycotts
The seed was planted for “She Who Dared” when Mouton’s mother told her, “You know your cousin sat on the bus before Rosa, right?”
“At first, I just kind of thought she was making up things,” said Mouton, 40, who lives in Houston, where she was the city’s first Black poet laureate. “But the more I dug into it, I actually found someone with [my mother’s] maiden name: Browder, Aurelia Browder, who did sit on the bus five months before Rosa Parks.”
Fast friends from the start, Mouton and Barnes — who met in 2021 at a development program through New York City’s American Lyric Theater — began going down research rabbit holes at 2 a.m.
As they learned about the Browder who gave her name to the Supreme Court case, they also came to know about other under-celebrated Black women at the forefront of the movement.
Mouton and Barnes, both former teachers, were shocked: Why hadn’t they heard these stories before?
They quickly realized they had a project on their hands, one that begged to be sung as an opera. And it couldn’t just focus on Browder.
“As we started to widen her spotlight, all of these other women came into view,” Mouton said. “And so, we really felt like we couldn’t do Aurelia’s story justice without also the story of all of these other women being amplified at equal measure.”
The result is a story about seven ordinary women who changed the course of history, including a white-passing woman named Susie McDonald, whose fair skin allowed her family to buy land to farm. In the opera too is a “mouthy” teenager named Claudette Colvin, who was the first to refuse to give up her seat but who was discredited by fellow activists because, as Mouton put it, she was young, bold and had dark skin.
An opera that disrupts the norm
Mouton and Barnes did not just set out to tell little-known history — they wanted to expand the types of roles available to Black female opera singers. Barnes, herself a singer, experienced the reality of limited roles and how those that were written with Black women in mind were often laced with stereotypes. So, in a rarity for the form, they’ve assembled an all-Black female cast. Those singers will be supported by D-Composed, the Chicago-based Black music collective.
All together, they’ve built a rehearsal room that is a respite from the outside world.
“It feels like a room full of sisters,” Barnes said.
The show is a big investment for the Chicago Opera Theater, which programs new and rare operas. It’s also a standout in the first season to be programmed by the company’s artistic and general director, Lawrence Edelson, who started in his role in 2023.
“She Who Dared” was, in part, supported by a $30,000 grant from the NEA. That funding came through prior to the federal agency terminating grants earlier this month. There’s no guarantee funds for similarly ambitious works will be available in the future.
Edelson, who also leads American Lyric Theater, is worried about that uncertainty. At one point, he thought he ought to self-censor a bit — to go forward with programming as usual but keep a low profile.
Then it hit him: To be meek while presenting work about women who were bold in the face of real danger would be hypocrisy. He decided his company is not holding back.
“It just felt so disingenuous,” Edelson said. “And I just got to a point where it’s like, no, we have to not only do [the show] but speak about what we’re doing in ways that will hopefully rally others.”
While “She Who Dared” grapples with serious subject matter, the creative duo behind it wants audiences to know: Be prepared to laugh and to tap your feet along to the music, which is infused with melodies inspired by genres like jazz, gospel and folk. That comes right from the show’s creators. Any time spent with Barnes and Mouton quickly makes clear that the pair is as infectiously fun as they are thoughtful — a blend they are also aiming for on stage.
“This piece is not a documentary,” Barnes said.
The piece is, however, a platform for stunning vocalists, such as singer Jacqueline Echols McCarley, who plays Rosa Parks. For Edelson, her solo is a standout moment in the show.
“I will put that aria up with something by Puccini or by Mozart or by Verdi. In terms of the emotional punch and the melodic beauty, it is just stunning,” he said.
The aria, which was not written until a later draft, dramatizes a very human moment before Parks boards the bus. She is wondering if her actions will even make a difference: “Can I? Will I? … When they ask me to stand, will I?”
“I think that is something that we all wrestle with in many ways, when we think about activism and making change,” Barnes said. “Like, will this matter years from now?”
