It has been a few years since composer Jimmy L贸pez and playwright Nilo Cruz first conceived their latest collaboration, the oratorio Dreamers. But the message behind this musical-dramatic reflection on the challenges faced by undocumented immigrants seems to become more pressingly relevant every day. The work, which was commissioned by Cal Performances and receives its highly anticipated world premiere this month (March 17, Zellerbach Hall), pays homage to the experiences of Berkeley students who were brought to the United States as children and now face uncertain legal status.
The overall climate of apprehension concerning the issue of immigration has steadily intensified since L贸pez and Cruz began creating Dreamers, a work created with lead funding from a Hewlett 50 Arts Commission, as well as co-commissioning support from Stanford Live, the University of Michigan, and Washington Performing Arts. Dreamers addresses the tension between concepts as fundamental and personal as the 鈥淎merican Dream鈥� and the elusive sense of resolution promised by the now-endangered policy known as DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals). Itself a response to the long-stalled DREAM Act, the DACA program was introduced in 2012 to clarify the standing of young people with undocumented status鈥攕uch as the several hundred students at Berkeley who face this stress on top of the usual pressures of university life.
Dreams are, at core, stories: stories we fashion from the data and reality of our everyday lives, and from the hopes and fears that fuel our personal journeys鈥攏arratives in which our imaginations confront the confines and borders that abound in the real world. The immigrant experience in particular has become tightly bound up with the persistent imagery of the American Dream, which encompasses both transformative possibility and the heartbreak of utopia denied.
Dreams are integral to how we define ourselves. But as we are seeing, conflict arises when the powers controlling the state attempt to decide just who is deserving of the 鈥渄ream鈥� of belonging in this country鈥攁nd when a large section of the population chooses to object. This thorny debate informs the 2018鈥�19 season鈥檚 Berkeley RADICAL Citizenship series of programs, which spotlights the human side of the current controversy on immigration and nationalism. By sharing unique perspectives on the threats to鈥攁nd responsibilities of鈥攃itizenship, the artists involved here illustrate the universal need for belonging and home, and invoke the very tangible sense of urgency felt by many.
And perhaps just as importantly, they advocate for a central role that the arts鈥攊n this case, classical music鈥攃an play when considering these issues.
Structuring the Dreams into a Unified Work
For Dreamers, L贸pez and Cruz interviewed a group of Berkeley students who have undocumented status, collecting a wealth of testimonies from them as raw material鈥攕uch as a linguistics student who is given voice in the work singing these lines: 鈥淚 blended with other students. I armed myself with books.鈥�
鈥淲e were inspired by all of the stories we encountered,鈥� says the Peru-born Jimmy L贸pez. 鈥�Dreamers is not about a single story but a combination of several that Nilo has shaped throughout the piece. Some of them are not so factually stated but are more stylized.鈥�
This narrative interweaving forms the basis for what has turned out to be one of L贸pez鈥檚 most ambitious projects to date. The 40-year-old composer, who was born in Lima, has been a Bay Area resident since his years as a graduate student at Berkeley (PhD, 2012). Internationally in demand, L贸pez won widespread acclaim for his debut opera, Bel Canto鈥攊nspired by the best-selling novel by Ann Patchett鈥攚hich was commissioned by Lyric Opera of Chicago and premiered there in 2015. He has additionally attracted the interest of leading orchestras around the world and is currently in the middle of a composer residency with the Houston Symphony.
The result has attracted some powerful classical music stars to perform the world premiere. Dreamers will be unveiled during the culminating concert of this season鈥檚 major orchestral residency at Cal Performances, which features London鈥檚 Philharmonia Orchestra in three different programs (March 15鈥�17). The oratorio shares the bill with Stravinsky鈥檚 ballet music for The Firebird, the breakthrough work that brought the composer international fame (in the original scoring for an enormous orchestra). Esa-Pekka Salonen, who was recently announced as music director designate of the San Francisco Symphony鈥攈e takes over the reins from Michael Tilson Thomas in 2020鈥攚ill conduct. Dreamers also calls for a nearly 80-voice chorus (the San Francisco-based Volti, joined by the UC Berkeley Chamber Chorus) and a prominent solo part, to be performed by the Grammy Award-winning soprano Ana Mar铆a Mart铆nez.
Organized in six parts and lasting about 40 minutes, Dreamers uses these forces to shift perspective seamlessly, moving from the collective to the individual, from the timeless, archetypal quest for a better life to specific dreams reflecting the individual stories of the students and their families. Unlike an opera, which typically assigns singers to readily defined characters playing out prescribed roles, Dreamers unfolds as a poetic, multilayered series of reflections on border crossing, its narrative logic itself resembling that of dreams.
Musically, L贸pez designed a shape to reinforce the course traced by Cruz鈥檚 libretto. Overall, Dreamers takes the form of an arch, beginning and ending with a larger-than-life perspective closer to what you might find in myth. 鈥淚t descends into the actual, nitty-gritty reality of things in the central sections鈥攖he third movement is a commentary on the issue of child separation, for example鈥攖hen moves back away toward a timeless, more global view,鈥� explains the composer. The result, he emphasizes, is much more encompassing than a documentary. In fact, according to Cruz, it鈥檚 the concept of Dreamers that derives from the student interviews, but not the actual language of the libretto. 鈥淚 tried to steer away from any kind of language that might seem like I鈥檓 reporting like a journalist. You can get that already from the news. I鈥檓 not a documentarian. I felt that the piece needed to be framed in a different way.鈥�
鈥淥ne thing that opened my eyes as I was composing,鈥� adds L贸pez, 鈥渋s the realization that the group we call 鈥榙reamers鈥� involves a kaleidoscope of people who are going through extremely varied experiences, coming from mixed-status families. In some cases, the parents will never be able to enjoy any kind of legal status, and this creates a dichotomy within the house and family that is heart-wrenching to see.鈥�
To enhance the sense of changing perspectives, L贸pez juxtaposes many different musical colors and textures. The first, third, and sixth (final) sections call for the full-scale forces of chorus and orchestra, while the shorter second section is for the unaccompanied chorus. The choral fifth movement (titled 厂耻别帽辞蝉, 鈥淒reams鈥�) is delivered entirely in Spanish, with individual singers or groups of singers stepping forward in a panorama-like sweep to give voice to multiple characters.
The fourth movement, on the other hand, is an extensive solo for the soprano, in which Mart铆nez embodies a dreamer who shares her story with us. 鈥淎na Mar铆a is singing at her prime now and is such a force,鈥� remarks L贸pez, 鈥渢hat there is little I cannot have her do. I make use of her virtuosity, of her wide register, from its darker regions to a high C-sharp in her upper regions. Because of her operatic experience, her singing has a wonderfully dramatic quality, which I鈥檝e given her room to explore. She needs to create not one character but several鈥攅ven in the course of a single movement. In fact, we changed the title to reflect this, from Dreamer to Dreamers, since this is the story not of one but of many.鈥�
Oratorio as the Vehicle for Musical Storytelling
For Dreamers, L贸pez has drawn on his experiences writing both for the stage and for the orchestra. Dreamers is an example of the hybrid genre of the oratorio鈥攁 work that fuses the vocal and choral grandeur of opera with the concert experience of the orchestra. By far the best-known example of an oratorio is Handel鈥檚 Messiah鈥攚hich, as it happens, incorporates the Nativity story (a story about immigrant refugees) into its broad narrative of redemption based on the life, Passion, and resurrection of Jesus.
Oratorio may sound like an oddly old-fashioned format for such a contemporary story, yet the genre is enjoying a resurgence among composers today precisely because of the narrative freedom it offers. Bay Area composer John Adams greeted the millennium with El 狈颈帽辞, a retelling of the Nativity inspired in part by Messiah and filtered through the lens of contemporary Latinx in Los Angeles. Julia Wolfe won the 2015 Pulitzer Prize in Music for Anthracite Fields, which reconsiders the American Dream from the perspective of Pennsylvania coal miners from the turn of the last
century.
鈥淥ratorio comes from a long history of storytelling,鈥� explains Cal Performances interim artistic director Rob Bailis, who designed this season together with former artistic director Mat铆as Tarnopolsky. 鈥淎 very heightened, very personal kind of story does find its way into oratorio. The framework of a chorus can be the beating heart of humanity, joined by an astonishing solo singer who brings the stories of this community to life with incredible honesty. Jimmy L贸pez has given these stories a beautifully layered complexity鈥攁n architecture that holds up and supports these emotions.鈥�
Dreamers is L贸pez鈥檚 first undertaking in this hybrid choral-symphonic format. The same holds for Nilo Cruz, the veteran, Cuba-born playwright who became the first Latinx to win the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 2003 (awarded to his play Anna in the Tropics). Cruz鈥檚 2014 play Sotto Voce in one sense helped pave the way toward Dreamers. It, too, deals with the theme of refugees by exploring an ignominious episode from the past: the fate of the S.S. St. Louis, whose Jewish passengers, fleeing Nazi Germany in 1939, were denied entry into Cuba and the United States.
鈥淧laywrights are storytellers. We just tell our stories in a different way,鈥� says Cruz when discussing the unique challenge of crafting an oratorio libretto. 鈥淒ialogue, images, language are what we use to tell the story in a play, and of course actors. The language for an oratorio needs to be more concise and may even be told through a poem.鈥� Indeed, the poetic quality of the Dreamers libretto, observes L贸pez, helped feed his imagination as a composer. 鈥淚n poetry, you can pack a lot of meaning into just a few words. Almost every single word is heightened with this kind of poetic content.鈥�
In order to ensure a sense of movement as well as contrast between the sections that make up Dreamers, Cruz points out that he remained continually aware of the different voices represented by the soloist and the chorus. 鈥淚t鈥檚 almost like in Japanese painting where you take a brush and just drop paint onto a sheet of paper and then from that brushstroke you start to create something. The statements made by these students was the paint. Then I let it flow on the paper. But you鈥檙e also guiding the music in some way. The librettist must have an open mind. At the end of the day, we鈥檙e serving the music and the needs of the composer, who is interpreting and creating the material.鈥�
An Ideal Partnership
Dreamers marks L贸pez鈥檚 second time collaborating with Cruz, who also wrote the libretto for Bel Canto. The playwright recalls sensing an immediate connection to L贸pez when they first met in New York City to discuss plans for the opera. 鈥淚 thought it was going to be a 20-minute meeting and we ended up conversing for four hours, not only about the project but about our backgrounds and the kind of work we wanted to do,鈥� says Cruz.
He had initially been introduced to the composer鈥檚 music by Ren茅e Fleming, the celebrity soprano who curated and to whom L贸pez dedicated Bel Canto鈥攁 fictional elaboration of an actual event in Peru in 1996, the Japanese embassy hostage crisis. 鈥淪he sent me demos of his work. As soon as I heard it, I thought there was something dynamic about his music鈥攁 certain muscularity and force, a certain kind of sensibility that I responded to. It was an instant match.鈥�
The composer and the playwright both share backgrounds as Latin Americans who have gone through the immigrant experience. L贸pez in fact did so twice: first, as an immigrant from Peru to Finland, and then, in 2007, to the United States (he officially became a US citizen in January). 鈥淚鈥檓 not saying that I have experienced what people now are going through,鈥� L贸pez points out. 鈥淛ust that there is a certain connection in terms of displacement and what is home.鈥� He adds that this background has made him even more sensitive to his responsibility as an artist to give voice to 鈥減eople who do not have any voice or whose voice others are trying to silence. The way you set every word is very important. While Nilo and I were collaborating, we exchanged messages and emails all the time and made a lot of changes to the libretto.鈥�
Cruz, whose family left Cuba for the US when he was a boy of eight, observes that the story behind Dreamers recounts a pattern that keeps recurring throughout history: 鈥淚t happened with people like me who came here in the 1970s. Back then, there was a disdain for the Cuban exiles coming to Miami. A lot of the citizens from Miami were complaining that we were bringing our customs and changing the North American fabric.鈥�
Whenever he completes a score, L贸pez has a process of collecting all of his notes into a folder he can file away. He observes that he was surprised to realize with Dreamers that he had 鈥渟urprisingly few鈥� notes to gather up. Because of the pressure to compose the oratorio in a relatively short time frame, he explains, the material was 鈥渋nside my brain all the time. I was even dreaming of this literally and would wake up and write things down right into the score鈥擨鈥檓 thankful I have a husband who has been so patient throughout the process! And I think this has given the work an extra degree of intensity.鈥�
Thomas May is a writer, critic, educator, and translator. Along with essays regularly commissioned by the San Francisco Symphony, the Juilliard School, and other leading institutions, he contributes to the New York Times and Musical America and blogs about the arts at
