Michael J Evans A Fine Agitation Bella Adamova (mezzo-soprano); National Moravian-Silesian Theater Choir; Janáček Philharmonic Ostrava/Stanislav Vavřínek Navona NV6524 (digital only) 49:01 mins
Composer Michael J Evans has been increasingly drawn to social justice issues since moving to Washington DC – his home nation’s capital, and the seat of its political power – in 1986. His latest project, A Fine Agitation, is subtitled ‘an opera for the people’ and dedicated to Vice President Kamala Harris as ‘the first woman, the first Black American, and the first South Asian American to be elected’ to that office.
Evans’s subject is Susan B Anthony, the pivotal social reformer and campaigner for women’s suffrage who was infamously convicted for illegal voting after daring to do so in the 1872 presidential election. She refused lifelong to pay her $100 fine or accept the validity of the trial.
Utilising Anthony’s diary entries and letters to fellow activists from the time, as well as the text of her indictment, the opera comprises a series of eight scenes which tell the story from her perspective of events up to and following her arrest. In this digital-only release her role is taken by mezzo Bella Adamova who, together with members of the National Moravian-Silesian Theatre Choir as judge and onlookers, variously sings and narrates a journey which breezily references the suffrage anthem ‘Daughters of Freedom’ and more.
Evans aims to present Anthony as a ‘human’ rather than the icon she subsequently became. Most convincing is Scene 7, which depicts her feelings between arrest and trial with a brooding menace ably supported by the Janáček Philharmonic Ostrava under Stanislav Vavřínek.
Steph Power