Chicago Classical Review

Following its world premiere at Spoleto Festival USA in 2022, the opera Omar made several stops around the country to its many co-commissioning companies and garnered a Pulitzer Prize. Omar arrived in Chicago Friday night for a brief three-date run at Lyric Opera.

Omar was a pet project of Anthony Freud, the company’s unlamented former CEO and general director, who possessed an uncanny reverse Midas touch for presenting works and controversial stagings that few opera-goers in Chicago wanted to see. (Funding for these Omar performances is underwritten by two different Pritzker foundations.)

Jointly composed by Rhiannon Giddens and Michael Abels, Omar tells the true story of the Muslim scholar Omar ibn Said, a West African who was abducted by slave raiders in Senegal and brought to America in the early 1800s. Omar escapes from Johnson, a cruel and sadistic Charleston plantation owner, and is captured and arrested in Fayetteville. 

Eventually Omar is sold to the comparatively more enlightened plantation owner Owen, who is intrigued by Omar’s Aramaic religious writing on the walls of his jail cell. Encouraged by his daughter Eliza, Owen purchases Omar, hoping to convert him to Christianity and even gifting him a Bible in Arabic. Omar becomes confused and disprited in his spiritual quest. Encouraged by his friend and fellow slave Julie and the spirit of his deceased mother Fatima, Omar dedicates himself to writing about Islam and becoming a Koran scholar. The opera ends with a dramatic chorus—singers standing in the aisles of the theater—as Omar calls on the people of the United States to atone and learn about Islam.

The good news is that the music by Giddens & Abels (sounds like a law firm) is tonal, attractive and varied, moving the action efficiently through its concise 2-1/2 hour span (including intermission). And the story of an intelligent, mistreated man’s search for spiritual enlightenment and his true self is universal and compelling.

Yet despite the over-the-top encomia larded on Omar by legacy media—and the inevitable Pulitzer Prize—there are two major problems with Omar, both of which stem from the libretto, written by co-composer Giddens.

The first is that for most of the opera Omar is a stiff cardboard archetype that rarely seems like a genuine, three-dimensional—or even two-dimensional—human being. With Omar valorized from the curtain as a noble personage, the opera too often feels like an extended panegyric, a reverential pageant to Omar and Islam in which the audience is allowed to participate. Act II rounds out the character a bit more as a sort-of romance blooms between Omar and Julie. (An energetic but irrelevant dance scene also seems intended to liven up the rather dour proceedings.)

The other major problem is that the libretto too often seems to morph into an Islamic religious ceremony. The first part of the opening scene in Africa consists almost entirely of prayers to Allah, first by Omar, then the chorus and his mother Fatima—which would be fine for setting the narrative but this goes on for nearly 15 minutes. Is this an opera or a mosque service?

When the action returns to Omar, Julie and the other characters, some dramatic momentum is regained. Yet the opera—which seems to end two or three times—closes not on a note of religious freedom or ecumenicism, which everyone could celebrate, but on a somewhat ominous note with Omar stating that America must atone and convert to Islam, implying that there could well be dire consequences otherwise.

Suddenly, one wants to hear an operetta by Franz Lehár.

Lyric’s cast for Omar is solid and often excellent, making up to some degree for the proselytizing PSA’s and libretto issues.

Issachah Savage did all one could ask for in the challenging title role. Long a fixture in local choruses, Savage’s clear, powerful and penetrating tenor made sure dramatic impact at Omar’s key moments as with his two big solos in Act II. His lower range proved huskier but Savage brought dignified bearing to a rather hollow role with limited opportunities.

Kearstin Piper Brown brought an engaging stage presence and lightish soprano to Omar’s friend Julie. Zoie Reams delivered crucial dramatic moments as Fatima, Omar’s mother with her ample mezzo tones.

Other standouts among the large supporting cast were Matthew Dexter as Abdul, Omar’s brother, and Daniel Luis Espinal, double-cast as the slave Auctioneer and Taylor, Owen’s friend. Ryan Center member Camille Robles showed a pleasing mezzo voice as Owen’s compassionate daughter Eliza, but her semaphore Magic Hands gestures were distracting.

Bass-baritone Kyle Ketelsen is cornering the local market in portraying some of the most loathsome characters seen onstage at Lyric— Howard, the manipulative cult leader in The Listeners last year and now the racist, repellent plantation owner Johnson. Oddly, he also portrays the kinder and more compassionate—if still condescending—Owen. All these white slaveowners look alike.

Amy Rubin’s efficient scenic design provided some colorful visuals, not least Omar’s Aramaic script writing magically appearing on large walls as he writes. Such moments alternated with a preponderance of drab earth-colors, mitigated somewhat by Pablo Santiago’s artful lighting.

A majestic visual image of an African mosque in the opening minutes made one anticipate more striking projected images by Joshua Higgason to come. Unfortunately, that didn’t happen, as they were either lackluster or visually blocked by central set elements. Director Kaneza Schaal must take some blame for that, though she otherwise moved the action in workmanlike fashion.

The program lists three different costume designers, which indicates a problem. Apart from some colorful African garb in the early going, most of the enslaved characters and chorus seemed to be wearing jeans and their own rehearsal clothes, with little sense of historic period or character.

Conductor Kazem Abdullah did a laudable job keeping this episodic piece moving and on track. Chorus director Michael Black elicited strong and cohesive singing from the large, mostly black chorus assembled for this production.

Omar will be repeated 2 p.m. Sunday and 7 p.m. Wednesday. lyricopera.org

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