In 2018, poet laureate Rita Dove got an e-mail from composer Richard Danielpour, a man she admired but had met only once. He asked if she would consider writing the lyrics for a dozen songs that would recount the last fifty years of American history.
"I was just about to head off on a sabbatical and had everything planned out and certainly did need another project," she recalls, "but the idea was so amazing, + intriguing that I said, ‘Tell me more.’"
Danielpour explained that during the Trump years in office, he was frankly alarmed and frightened by what he saw happening to his country.
"I read the first 300 pages of – once again – of William Shirer's Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. So many of the tactics that Joseph Goebbels and Hitler implemented in Germany in the late 20’s, early 30’s were almost a carbon copy of the playbook of the Trump administration," he says.
Danielpour wanted to document what appeared to be an empire in decline, and he hoped mezzo-soprano Susan Graham would play the standing witness. She is the granddaughter of ranchers and cowboys – quintessentially American, and with her commanding voice, Danielpour told her, she was perfect for the role.
"She burst into tears, and she said, ‘You’re right!' And she then explained to me that she had had this almost obsession from the time that she was a student in New York with the Statue of Liberty."
"She’s so powerful," Graham explains. "She’s so enormous. She represents a guardianship, and I think that’s very comforting."
So Rita Dove began writing words for Lady Liberty, beginning in 1968 – the year both Robert F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King were assassinated.
"It was a moment in which the democracy + seemed to crumble," Dove says.
Other poems would explore the war in Vietnam, Richard Nixon and Watergate, the Gulf War, Donald Trump, the pandemic, the fall of Roe v. Wade and the day terrorists hit the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
There are also stories of hope and inspiration – from the moon landing and the fall of the Berlin Wall to Woodstock, Jimmy Hendrix, Mohammed Ali, Barack Obama and the last decade of the 20th century.
"There’s a really fun one which deals with all of the innovations that we had in the 90’s, like Wonder Bras and GPS and the Mario Brothers," Dove says.
And with her words in hand, Danielpour was inspired to compose. The program lasts over an hour – a challenge for soloist Graham.
"It seems to go by really quickly, because the subject matter changes with each song, and also, with Richard's great facility with compositional styles, he goes from something that’s almost Motown to jazz, to blues to ragtime."
A Standing Witness premiered in Chicago, then traveled to Tanglewood, the Kennedy Center and several universities. Reviews were great, but the composer has only modest expectations.
"The attention span of so many people has diminished so alarmingly but my real hope is that someone will listen," Danielpour says.
All three artists agree Americans are resilient and have the potential to learn from our mistakes and solve our problems. Virginians can draw their own conclusions on March 21st and 23rd at Old Cabell Hall in Charlottesville.
