NC Opera world premiere Feb. 15-16: Daniel Thomas Davis' 'Family Secrets'

On February 15 and 16, 2018, North Carolina Opera presents the world premiere staged production of Family Secrets: Kith and Kin by composer Daniel Thomas Davis. Commissioned for soprano Andrea Edith Moore, who is also the featured performer, Family Secretsbrings together original music by Daniel Thomas Davis, and newly commissioned texts from seven internationally acclaimed Southern authors (Allan Gurganus, Randall Kenan, Lee Smith, Frances Mayes, Michael Malone, Jeffery Beam and Daniel Wallace), with design and direction by Francesca Talenti. 

 

Every place, from grand public building to old barn, holds a story. Through music, words, voice, folk art and visual imagery, Family Secrets reveals how places are resonant with beauty as well as mystery and explores how secrets, both big and small, define ourselves, our families, and a sense of place. Projected images by the photographer Elizabeth Matheson, and small-scale models of houses, barns and other structures placed throughout the stage create an imaginative set curated from the world's largest private Folk Art Buildings Collection (featured in the New York Times). Soprano Andrea Edith Moore and actor Jane Holding move through this space as they embody the various characters in these connected tales. 

 

Soprano Andrea Edith Moore

Adding to the opera's 'sense of place', all seven authors as well as Ms. Moore are from Orange County, North Carolina, in the center of the Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill triangle. The composer Daniel Thomas Davis was also born and raised in North Carolina. The concert version of Family Secrets: Kith and Kin was performed by the University of North Carolina in 2015.

 

Composer Daniel Thomas Davis' wide range of musical activities has taken him from the stages of Carnegie Hall and the Royal Opera House to monasteries in the Horn of Africa to directing new-music festivals in the rural South. Praised as "ingenious" by The Guardian and for his "endless curiosity" by USA Today, he creates music singled out for its connection to the human voice and its "magnificent...and entirely original style of orchestration" (Lexington Herald Leader).