White Raven, Black Dove exploded into Dorchester’s Strand Theater this weekend before the most age-diverse and enthusiastic audience I have ever seen at an opera in Boston. Cerise Lim Jacobs’s libretto builds steam as it progresses, weaving together archetypes from ancient creation stories to bring contrasting world views into conflict and lay bare their similarities.

This new 90-minute multimedia opera [full program HERE], is truly a modern Gesamtkunstwerk. It was produced by White Snake Projects, “an activist opera company” founded in Boston around 2010 by former federal prosecutor and operatic librettist Cerise Lim Jacobs [descriptions of recent projects HERE]. Created in partnership with Lesley University’s College of Art and Design, White Raven, Black Dove featured nine professional singers in dozens of roles and town players in the pit, led by composer/conductor Tianhui Ng. Artists and animators who contributed to the scenic design include Lead 3D artist Diedre Morgan [bio HERE], Lead Environmental Artist Isabelle Colantuonio [bio HERE], and a team that included Bethann Wong, Adilson V. Amado, Marco Cao, Elias Giordano, Pari Kim, Arielle Schenkman, Drew Silva, Adam Vardaro, Francis Coughlin, Sarah Scully, Emily D. Vergne, Jake Anderson, Colby Cormier, Haris Hasimbegovic, Jacob Miranda, Clark Sermonia, and Braeden C. Martin Salido. The projections supported and illustrated 100% of the opera, combining film of oceans, rain, landscapes, and stars with vibrant environmental effects, beautiful animations, and washes of majestic color.

The multi-faceted set ably represented two divided regions, indoor and outdoor scenes, and past/future imagined worlds. Professional designers who contributed to the production include Stage Director Laine Rettmer, Director of CGI Curvin Huber [bio HERE], Scenic Designer Erik Diaz [praised for his award-winning Broadway set for Billy Elliot, bio HERE], MIT’s Kevin Fulton, a lighting designer and master electrician also active in theater at BCO and BU [bio HERE], and Projection Designer and multimedia artist Cynthia Chen [bio HERE].

Jacobs produced this new opera, and the program included a letter from her to the packed Boston-based audience:

You’re in for a treat with White Raven, Black Dove, a magical, multimedia world premiere! While RAVEN explores two of the most difficult issues facing us as Americans today – race and climate change, it does so with compassion, humor, poignancy and love, drawing us deep into the essence of the characters who live in this dystopian world. 

One of RAVEN’s storytelling superpowers is its use of mythology. We all know the raven and the dove from many different contexts. The raven is the first bird Noah released to test the world after the rain stopped; it’s also Odin’s familiar in Norse mythology, the trickster and creator bird in Indigenous mythology . . .  And who doesn’t know the dove, the symbol of peace, of purity, of salvation, for it was the dove, the second bird Noah released who came back with a green leaf, a sign that it was time to return to the earth.

RAVEN opens in a post-apocalyptic world after the Sixth Extinction, which is the extinction event accelerated by human action/inaction. We see how the two tribes left survive the extremes of climate devastation, resorting to the invention of an embryonic suit, a “second” skin put on at birth which grows with them to protect them from radiation. It is in this setting that we explore race as a social construct, one with no biological basis. It is here that we confront how our identities are shaped by our perceptions of our skin color. It is here that we stand in awe at the human will to survive. It is here that we see ourselves stripped of all preconceptions. It is here that our hearts break with pain for past iniquities. And it is here that we weep for the fragile hope of reconciliation, rebirth and resurrection. 

RAVEN meets this moment in our country and our lives. We live in an increasingly fraught world with extreme climate fluctuations, substitution of superstition for science, the elevation of profit over humanity, and the deep dark divide between “us” and “them.” That’s the dystopian world of RAVEN, yet, its people manage to find a way out and forge a fragile rapprochement. We cannot be paralyzed by the barrage of terrible events assaulting us each day. We have to hold on to who we are, and to each other. Only then can we wake up each day, put one foot forward and then the next . . . to do something, no matter how small it may seem, to find that green leaf, the sign of a good and humane life returning to this earth.

As the performance began, Jacobs spoke eloquently from the stage about the power of art in community. “Here we are, at the beautiful Strand [Theater] with this amazing multimedia show. So let me tell those of you who subscribe to our newsletter [many different topics HERE], and who follow us on social media [videos HERE, on Insta HERE, on Facebook HERE], and on their free YouTube channel HERE], you have seen all those pictures and clips of the show… I will bet you, that some of you are going to say to yourself, ‘Hmm. I wonder if that’s been touched up and doctored? Nothing could really be as cool as that. Right?’ [Audience laughs.] I know what you’re thinking. But in fact, it’s cooler, because it’s happening live. And live performance always has an element of risk.” 

She continued by highlighting the work of local students from Lesley University (in the scenic designs and 3D projections) and emphasizing the challenges of working with live electronics, a live band (in the Strand’s luxurious pit), live singers (from both operatic and musical theater) and dancers. Jacobs then addressed one of the guiding purposes of the premiere: “We are an activist opera company what does that mean? We explore contemporary issues that mean a lot to you and to me. This year it’s climate and race as a social construct: that is [race] does not have any biological basis [read more on this issue in Scientific American HERE]. And we will see how colorism affects our perception of our own identity.” She concluded by illustrating ways that the audience might react to the production, saying “This is what musical theater should be. It should be welcoming. It should allow you to express your feelings… because ultimately, you are going on a journey with us, a journey of discovery. And you are going to find out a lot of things about issues, but you are most importantly going to learn a lot about how you think, what you feel, what your hearts emotes when you see these issues unfold on the stage.”

STRUGGLES
How many extinctions and great floods have filled human history? These are perfect topics to tackle with the medium of opera. Could the world have been created by a raven (Northern stories from America’s northwest coastal peoples and the Vikings), then to be saved by a dove (Middle Eastern stories from desert peoples)? Over ninety minutes, Jacobs’ complex take on these myths expands into a discussion of difference, color, race, hope, and love [teaser trailer and complete creatives list HERE].

Four bird characters set the scene, with two singers dominating Act One, disappearing in a wall of flame, and returning in Act Two in (new) human roles. Longy’s A. J. Ramsey [bio HERE] sang the heartbreaking soprano role of Dovina, complemented by baritone Scott Ballatine’s dramatic elder raven [bio HERE]. Their mutual devotion to solution-seeking began as two extended ariosos, then evolved into a moving duet and climax in Act One. Both singers returned as members of the important vocal quartet that provided needed dissonance and sustained organlike a cappella harmonies (think Poulenc and Hindemith) throughout ensemble numbers.

Video projections for the Act One sacrifice of these hopeful messenger birds were visually stunning and overwhelmed the audience (you could hear sobs and cries of awe for the front rows). Two younger birds are the showstopping virtuosi who carry us through the entire narrative: Met Opera National Semifinalist Chuanyuan Liu [bio HERE], known to local audiences from his portrayal of the title countertenor role in last year’s Monkey: A Kung Fu Puppet Parable, developed the character of the younger “runt” Raven throughout vocal highs, comedic gestures, and dramatic, intense lows. His winning virtuosity complimented that of Baroque specialist and coloratura soprano Maggie Finnegan [bio HERE], a local gem who has recorded roles with Boston Baroque, Boston Lyric Opera, and BMOP. Her brilliant, halting transformation from a terrified young dove (singing vocables) to a fully-articulate leader (singing in English) defined the most hopeful arc of the story. Broadway costume designer Christopher Vergara [bio HERE] designed primitivist white and black fringed sheaths (for the birds) and complex, multilayered “skins” for the human characters. His work was fully described in the many recitatives helping to define each character, its identity/worldview, and elements of its transformation (mentally and/or literally). This was the first opera I have seen to deal with both a character “in costume” and the character “under” a costume. In this sense, Vergara’s role was as important as that of the composer or librettist in creating the world of the opera.

Ensemble singers Lucas Ludwig Coura [bio HERE] and Daon Drisdom [bio HERE] seemed to be everywhere at once: they blended seamlessly with the sound worlds of characters both “below” and “above.” Coura’s piercing, plaintive countertenor provided an incisive edge to the complex quartet music. Drisdom’s warm tenor sound dominated the opera’s final crisis, bringing an important element of danger and unresolvable tension through his strong acting. Soprano Abigail Radford [bio HERE] was stunning as the young bird trainer Peristeri. Her sensitivity and vocal nuance was a perfect choice for the young boy’s character: her final scenes and collapse recalled Frederica von Stade’s portrayal of the young boy in Ravel’s L’Enfant et les Sortileges.

DANCED ELEMENTS
Four dancers, in contrasting solid ensembles, heightened the drama at four crucial points. Gianni DiMarco (in earthy dark tan, bio HERE), evoked Erick Hawkins’ powerful gestures and leaps; he seemed to rise directly out of the ground in an ever-changing kaleidoscope of fascinating, unique poses. DiMarco, who won Boston Conservatory’s “Outstanding Dance Faculty” of the Year” in 2012, is one of the best reasons for young dancers to consider study in Boston: his experience as the founder of Step by Step! (a local dance program for children with autism), glimpses of student solos from his decade of success at BOCO, and visible echoes of his choreographic work for Boston Ballet, Boston Lyric Opera, and Boston Baroque, were powerful visible unifiers of the complex plot. His choreography and dancing were the most important unifying element in White Raven, Black Dove.

 Ronnie Terrell (in red) loomed over the quartet with fiery flourishes, unifying many beautiful farandole-chain variations and providing a powerful center. His radiant choreography was tempered by the other elemental forces, who clearly drew energy and stature from his performance. Boston Ballet’s Juliet Brown (in light brown, bio HERE) and Berklee’s Elvis Pietrzak (in royal blue, bio HERE) were elegant, graceful partners throughout the Act One ensemble work. They stole the last scene (a huge finale near the end of Act Two backed by a miraculous gentle rainstorm) with a thoughtful, effortless pas de deux that seemed to evoke Air and Water in perfect harmony.

MORE VOICES
The first two characters introduced to the audience, in a wash on cosmic reds and blues, were Y- Chromosome Adam, deftly and powerfully sung by tenor Charles Calotta [Bio HERE] and Mitrochodrial Eve, introduced by soprano powerhouse Pascale Spinney [bio HERE]. Spinney’s warm, vibrant voice provided a lyrical, empathetic view on the beginnings of the human race, even as she disappeared, changed costumes/roles, and then dominated the rest of the opera as the leading character of Kora, a trainer of English-speaking ravens and doves. Spinney is the kind of soprano who excels in every tessitura (think Carmen, approaching Sally Bowles when angry, with a top end built for Rosina): I once saw her bring down the house as Dido in Central City (America’s fifth oldest continuous opera company, in the heart of the Rockies).

In keeping with them themes of transformation and the need to look at issues from multiple perspectives, Calotta evolved into a modern Evolutionary Biologist for Act Two, providing some of the most satisfying and emotionally intelligent acting of the evening. His final duet with Kora acted as a powerful musical frame for Jacobs’ story, reuniting the two strongest voices of the night in a satisfying counterpoint song incorporating five musical themes from Act One.

CONNECTIONS
Audience concerns, comments, and questions were encouraged at talk-backs following each of the three performances this weekend. The lobby was filled with tables in front of painted portraits of historic musicians and Boston’s earliest Wurlitzer organ, installed at the Strand in 1918. Hosts featured information and encouraged activism on a wide range of local topics, including non-violent direct action on climate change [Boston Chapter website HERE], ways to reduce plastic pollution [website HERE], news about increasing private jet pollution/expansion at Hanscom Field [website HERE], and sea level rise in Boston and Dorchester [Mass.gov website HERE]. If you want to see how opera can be relevant to contemporary events, or see opera among an audience of young, concerned Bostonians, don’t miss WSP’s next show at the Plaza Theater on Jan. 10-11, 2026 [watch for more info HERE].

THE SEASON
WSP has collaborated with dozens of contemporary composers on Pulitzer Prize-winning operas and NEA-funded community concerts. Recent programs have centered around local concerns of Boston citizens, climate action, neighborhood preservation/development, supporting a multi-year touring collaboration entitled “Sing Out Strong.” Vocal chamber music with texts by local youths were featured in the first season (during COVID), focused on the theme “Essential Voices.” Read more about recent operatic premieres and their extensive (and growing) library of performance videos HERE.

You can read the BMInt review of the 2020 groundbreaking virtual concert HERE and listen to each selection HERE. The second season, focused around the theme “Incarcerated Voices,” may be heard HERE. The company’s “Ticket Access” Program” guarantees that they can give away 30% of all seats, to diversify their audience (by both income and age). Additional discount programs [HERE] make WSP’s shows a welcoming place for families and for those who might not normally attend operas in Boston: these efforts are obvious to any audience member, as Jacobs has radically (and gently) transformed the whole structure around listener engagement. It’s common for local high students to loudly support a company they helped build, for the orchestra to be cheered on by college students turning out en masse to encourage friends who contributed design elements, and for many listeners new to the form to exclaim, “Who knew I loved opera?” etc. I heard remarks at intermission calling the show, “best,” “weirdest,” “thought-provoking,” “unusual sci-fi re-telling of my favorite myth,” and a “that was an interesting take on the Morlocks and Eloi [from Jules Verne’s The Time Machine].

This season’s music has presented new songs and operas exploring contemporary and local poetry by writers as young as 16 on “What does the climate change means for their generation.” Songs from these new collaborations were featured at the New England Aquarium (World Ocean Day 2025). Two were featured as “curtain raisers” as a short prelude to another of WSP’s successful new operas, To the People Like Us in June 2025 [BMInt review by this author HERE].

THE COMPOSER
These two songs anticipated the upcoming WSP mainstage production White Raven, Black Dove, with a score co-composed by Andrew Jackson Lynch, a composer/lyricist, librettist, arranger, and educator based in New York City, and Jacinth Greywoode, whose music for Broadway’s Cult of Love was a 2024 NYTimes Critic’s Pick. His Swing-era period piece Blended 和 (Harmony), exploring the lives of USO-stars the Kim Loo Sisters, was commissioned by Theater Mu. His musical Black Girl in Paris, based on episodes from the life of Sally Hemmings, has just won the 2025 Richard Rodgers Prize.

Greywoode’s White Raven, Black Dove, “a thrilling sci-fi fantasy about life after the Sixth Extinction and the resurrection of the world” explores the impacts of climate change and race as a social construct. This music, receiving its world premiere September 26-28 at the Strand Theatre, was begun in 2018, after Jacobs’ libretto was completed. The main musical themes of the work, which build to an elegant, satisfying conclusion, are well described in the composer’s own words:

“It is the Sixth Extinction.”

What an evocative, expansive way to begin. These are the literal first words of the libretto of White Raven Black Dove, the first words I read back in 2018 when Cerise and I began work on this piece (ah, the innocence of the before-times: before a global pandemic, before the sociopolitical upheavals that have since made this fictional universe ever more present and telling). It is these words that initially drew me to the Onyxs and Silvers, with their embryonic suits and talking creator birds, their ritualized sacrifice, their prejudices and warmongering, their intrigues and denials. Their longing for the beauty, simplicity, and harmony of times long gone. These words are the kernel that expanded ever outward into the opera you are about to watch. How does humanity rebuild after global extinction—not the first, nor the second, nor even the third. The sixth! And what does that sound like. 

Rich, nuanced, specific environments are what draw me to compose for opera and theater—to build universes through music, to narrate stories with the spoken word, the sung word, and the sounds beyond words themselves.

And so. 

It is the Sixth Extinction and we are in a world of contrasts: an underground, steampunk society devoid of light whose perpetual darkness covers an intricate and precarious system of electricity, irrigation, and mining, and an aboveground desert society of perpetually harsh sunlight, unfiltered radiation, and acid rain. Two societies barely surviving, two societies in fierce opposition, and two societies who have created their own individual mythologies of how to return to the “dream of times long gone” (again, ever more present, telling).

Here already are our musical landscapes—namely a modernist, crunchy core (sometimes serialized, sometimes freely atonal) to highlight the mechanical, harsh, unforgiving worlds of the Silvers and Onyxs, said core undergirded by Neo-Classical and Neo-Romantic nods to structure and tonality (it is the sixth extinction, after all; our musical pendulum will have swung from Bach through Berlioz to Berg and back again several times over) and threaded through with traditional folk melodies and popular music (cf. Anne Washburn and Michael Friedman’s Mr. Burns; a post-electric play for how the popular becomes mythic). These juxtapositions, of the stridently angular and the quietly pastoral, the industrially complex and the peacefully straightforward, are the musical heart of White Raven Black Dove. 

They are also reflected in the orchestration. The traditional—flute, clarinet, oboe, bassoon, brass, strings, piano—encounters the popular in saxophones and acoustic guitar, and breaks open yet further through the crackling shrieks and distortion of electric guitar/pedalboard and programmed electronic music/electronic percussion.

For those looking for specific themes to follow, pay close attention to the Prologue. Out of the many motifs of the piece, the following three ideas form the main motivic structures of the opera:

1. 1. 1. The opening four notes (B-C, then down to E-F) outline the harmonic battle that will occupy the rest of the music, that of E5/E major vs F5/F major. This crunchy thesis statement reflects the seemingly irreconcilable battle between the Onyxs below and the Silvers above, with seconds (and by inversion sevenths) underpinning nearly all the harmonic and melodic moves of the opera; that is, at least until we hopefullydoreconcile to a more consonant relation by the end of the story. This E major vs F major battle features perhaps most prominently in Raven’s “White Raven Aria” in Act I.
      2. The “pentatonic ease” of 200,000 years ago, with its gently ebbing and flowing rhythms and folk/world melodies (see how many themes you can catch; they range from God Save the Queen, to the Kookaburra song, to South Asian and Eastern Slavic folk tunes and anthems, indigenous American melodies, and most everything in between.)
      3. The Song of Saltwater, a poignant Romantic remembrance of the times that came before, but that have now been washed away by the tears of our pain and nostalgia.

Ultimately, I hope that the music of White Raven Black Dove tells the same story as the words of its libretto: that of a world in disrepair working to rebuild itself, of a people whose outer differences mask the deeply human and universal core within all. It is the Sixth Extinction, yes, but with Raven and Dove, Kora and Peristeri, Pano and the Elders—let us “create a new world.”

MORE ON A LOCAL GEM
Ng described his work with Jacinthe Greywoode’s 600+-page score in the White Raven, Black Dove program:

Jacinth Greywoode’s music lives in the liminal space that White Snake Projects often operates in, between opera and musical theater, between Classical and Broadway, between Acoustic and Electronic music. The score for White Raven, Black Dove, one rooted in the year 2025, brings to life a dystopian world following the sixth extinction, utilizes this multiplicity of identities and influences to great effect.

Fans of opera and musical theatre are in for a treat as Greywoode satisfies our love of beautiful melodies that grip our heartstrings and bring us to tears, expressing much more than words or music can do on their own. The epic storytelling that opera is so good at doing, with grand sweeps of the orchestra and dramatic choral writing, pairs here with the intimate exchanges of some of the most endearing characters in the music, even as it subtly introduces moments of levity in a profoundly dark reality.  

Fans of electronic music, and the amplified sound world of contemporary music theater, will enjoy the powerful beats, atmospheric sound effects, virtuosic guitar playing, all blended into a score that draws music from cultures across the world, even as it utilizes familiar 12-tone scales for otherworldly effects, and even more familiar pentatonic collections that connect so many folk traditions. 

I have had great fun working on realizing the score, to imbue our performance with life and breath even as we coordinate with the many electronic elements that help situate the music in a dystopian futures. As with such music that lives in between styles, finding a way the many references work in operatic vocalism mediated through amplification has been a major part of how I’ve worked with all the musical elements in the cast and ensemble. In addition, as always for a world premiere, we worked closely with our composer to ensure that his imagination for all the digital effects that are often difficult to notate in a score, combine with the more traditional elements of the ensembles in a cohesive whole.

For those of us who enjoy delving deep into the music, I hope this gives you some insight of the many elements we are balancing, and that the show moves your heart, tickles your intellect and inspires you with hope as we jointly imagine a future that prevents the creation of the blighted world in which this opera is set.

Laura Stanfield Prichard has taught in Boston universities since 2003, after serving a decade as Vance Geroge’s Assistant Director for the Grammy Award-winning San Francisco Symphony Chorus. She sings with professional choirs on both coasts, is a PBS/NYPhi Dramaturg, a was a finalist for the Alderman Prize (Outstanding Writing on Women & Music) and the Weill Prize (Distinguished Scholarship in Music Theater).