The poster art for She Who Dared, receiving its world premiere at Chicago Opera Theater, shows seven preternaturally tall Black woman, stylish in the taste of the mid–20th century, staring us down from behind a beat-up bus that rolls our way straddling the double-yellow line on a two-lane country road. Boy, that bus is dusty! Any driver behind that windshield? And what’s with the storm clouds, rimmed in ominous orange? If you’re flashing on Rosa Parks, she who dared to keep her seat on the bus on December 1, 1955, in Montgomery, Alabama, you’re in the ballpark. She Who Dared promises to “recenter” the Rosa Parks “narrative” on unsung Civil Rights pioneers who paved the way for the one who made the headlines. The score by Jasmine Barnes is set to a libretto by Deborah D.E.E.P. Mouton. The cast features the sopranos Jasmine Habersham, Jacqueline Echols, and Lindsey Reynolds plus the mezzos Chrystal E. Williams, Deborah Nansteel, Leah Dexter, and Cierra Byrd. Seven women, just like on the poster. Which one, if any, is Rosa Parks? Check out the opera and see! Michael Ellis Ingram conducts; Timothy Douglas is the director. —Matthew Gurewitsch