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The Arts Intel Report

A Cultural Compass
For the World Traveler
A Cultural Compass
For the World Traveler

The Time of Our Singing, by Kris Defoort

Sept 14–26, 2021
Place de la Monnaie, 1000 Bruxelles, Belgium

Black Lives Matter crosses the Atlantic. Based on the novel of the same name by Richard Powers, a MacArthur Fellow and winner of book prizes too numerous to list, the latest opera by the genre-defying Belgian composer Kris Defoort concerns two musicians united and divided by their art; they are the children of an interracial couple who met at Marian Anderson’s historic recital on the Lincoln Memorial steps in 1939. “To my mind,” the composer has said, “it doesn’t happen often that a contemporary opera is so profoundly rooted in the ‘now’ and yet raises so many universal themes.” A world premiere. —M.G.