The debut of 'Omar,' a thoroughly American opera
Composers Rhiannon Giddens and Michael Abels have brought a true story to the opera stage: the life of Omar Ibn Said, a Senegalese Muslim scholar who was enslaved and brought to the Carolinas.
A new opera tells the true story of an enslaved man taken from his home in what is now Senegal and trafficked to South Carolina. The opera premiered at the Spoleto Festival USA, less than a mile down the road from where the man was sold and after which he spent five decades on plantations, including the one at which he wrote his autobiography — the only known, surviving slave narrative written in Arabic.
Julie, an enslaved Black woman, is a fictional character that Rhiannon Giddens created for this opera. When Julie first met the newly enslaved man, she later tells him, he reminded her strongly of someone else: "My daddy wore a cap like yours," she sings. She's referring to the that many Muslim men and those
