American audiences have yet to discover the opera The Time of Our Singing, adapted from an American novel by two Belgians. While the creative triumvirate—Richard Powers (author), Peter Kraaij (libretto), and Kris Defoort (music)—is all-male and white, their sweeping interracial family saga stands as the richest operatic treatment of #BLM themes yet to emerge. The opera concerns two musicians united and divided by their art; they are the children of an interracial couple who met at Marian Anderson’s historic 1939 recital on the Lincoln Memorial steps. “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.” The original production at the Monnaie in 2021 received the 2022 International Opera Award for Best World Premiere of the Year. Whatever the competition may have been, this work is a masterpiece. An American premiere is way overdue. —Matthew Gurewitsch