Lorene Cary and African Queens.
In recent years the writer and Penn senior lecturer Lorene Cary C’78 G’78—best known for memoir and fiction—has branched out into playwriting. Two of her works have been staged by Philadelphia’s Arden Theatre Company: My General Tubman [“Her General Tubman,” Mar|Apr 2020] and Ladysitting [“Arts,” Jan|Feb 2024], based on her 2019 memoir of the same title.
She’s also begun writing librettos, the text for operas and other vocal works. In addition to a short opera, The Gospel According to Nana, also drawn from Ladysitting, Cary is collaborating with the composer and singer Damien Geter on a full-length opera about Fisk University’s famed Jubilee Singers, commissioned by the Portland Opera Company and scheduled to premiere in 2026.
But readers don’t have to wait until then to sample their work. Geter and Cary have also contributed a song to African Queens, a collection of nine new works on the theme of queens in Africa and the African Diaspora by contemporary African American composers, poets, and librettists commissioned by soprano Karen Slack, a Curtis Institute of Music graduate and Philadelphia native.
The recital premiered over the summer at the Ravinia Festival in Highland Park, Illinois, and is currently touring the US. Geter and Cary’s subject was Amanirenas, a warrior queen who ruled the Kingdom of Kush in the years before and after the beginning of the Common Era and fought against Roman forces in Egypt.
In a “digital postcard” after attending the premiere, Cary recalled how, while preparing to write, she had gone to sit by the Temple of Dendur in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, “waiting for the aria’s structure to blow through me. Because that’s what a librettist gives—the structure—to the composer, who writes the drama in music so that the singer can slip into the character’s story and tell it from the inside.”
In their song, “Queen Amanirenas has returned from battling the Roman army that killed her husband and son,” Cary wrote. “The historical Amanirenas had the head of Augustus Caesar, whose statue the Romans had carried into battle, lopped off and buried under the entrance to her temple where worshippers would step on it before and after prayer — the very head sits in the British Museum today, perfectly preserved by the burial in sand.
“Amanirenas lost an eye in battle, but according to the Greek historian Strabo, recovered to send to Augustus arrows cast from pure gold with this message, which I quoted, and Damien set:
If you want peace,
Take these with my blessing;
If you want war,
You will need them.
“The music here soars, queenly, determined, bright red!
“But it’s also true that after losing a husband and son to the Romans, Amanirenas would not let her daughter go to war. So, the music slows and quiets.
“In one exquisite moment, Damien takes away the piano and the voice sings unaccompanied. Karen has climbed to this moment, switch-backing between power and maternal tenderness, and the voice hangs just above our heads, before she makes the final ascent into prophecy: Her one eye, she says, can see a matrilineal future dynasty and peace for her people.” —JP
Performances in 2025 include at the Kennedy Center Terrace, Washington, DC, March 9; Kaufmann Concert Hall, 92NY, New York, March 11; Schermerhorn Symphony Center, Nashville, March 16; and Symphony Hall, Phoenix, April 12–19. Visit www.sopranokarenslack.com/performances.
