(Above: Ryan Dixon (left) and Marcus Peterson play Tom Chance and Joe in Ashley Hastings’ chamber opera, Free Men, making its debut at the Wildish Theater in downtown Springfield.)
By Randi Bjornstad
A year ago this month, retired professor-turned-composer Ashley Hastings unveiled his first chamber opera, Free Men, by way of a workshop in which musicians and singers got together and gave an informal performance “to see what works and what doesn’t,” as Hastings put it at the time.
Free Men, a story set during the Civil War, centers around two young Southern men, one white, one Black, both gay, and the complications that presented in a society in which both race and sexual orientation were not only fraught but potentially dangerous.
It focuses on the young white man, Tom Chance, who was conscripted to fight for the Confederacy despite his opposition to both slavery and war. Badly wounded in combat, Tom returns home to learn that his late father’s employer, a mill owner named Arthur Owen, is determined that Tom should marry Owen’s daughter, Celeste, and take over the business.
But an uncle who has died has bequeathed a plantation to Tom offers a new freedom. He goes there to take up residence, meets the newly emancipated Joe, who had worked for Tom’s uncle, and they quickly develop a relationship.
When Owen realizes that truth, he demands that Tom immediately marry Celeste, under threat of prison for sodomy for him and lynching for Joe. The result is violence.
Couner tenor Ryan Dixon and bass/baritone Marcus Peterson play the main characters, Tom Chance and Joe, in Free Men, along with Jocelyn Claire Thomas as Celeste Owen and Carson Truett Lott as her father, Arthur Owen.
The effort took four years from concept to completed musical score, and the experience whetted Hastings’ appetite for more.
In fact, by the time he held the Free Men rollout, he already had embarked on another chamber opera, The Dream, which had its own introductory workshop four months later, in July 2022.
Its plot revolves around two women, one a novelist, Penny Pensive, whose book titles always included a reference to “truth,” such as one in which the heroine was named Verity Semper, from the Latin semper veritas, or “always truth.” In the midst of a severe writer’s block, a knock on Pensive’s door reveals a woman claiming to be Verity Semper and demanding that Pensive revise her book, because the plot includes the death of Verity’s husband, and she says that’s why the writer is having so much trouble completing the story.
The actor/singers in The Dream are soprano/mezzo-soprano Emily Pulley as Penny Pensive and soprano Jocelyn Claire Thomas as Verity Semper.
As composer and librettist Hastings sums up that plot: What happens when an author’s main character shows up at her door and demands changes in her story? Who’s awake? Who’s asleep? Who’s dreaming? Who knows?
It’s definitely the stuff of opera, and now both Free Men and The Dream have been fully staged and scheduled for performance at the Wildish Theater in downtown Springfield. It will be performed by the nonprofit Cascadia Chamber Opera, which originated in Eugene and now has its headquarters in Astoria.
In addition to singing, Pulley directs the production, with assistance from Alessa Bakkum and sets and costumes by Bernie Robe. Naomi Castro conducts, with piano accompaniment by Nathalie Fortin.
Premieres of two chamber operas by Ashley Hastings — Free Men and The Dream
When: 7 p.m. on March 24 and 3 p.m. on March 26, 2023
Where: Wildish Community Theater, 630 Main St., Springfield
Tickets: $28, $35, $40, students $10, available at the door or online at wildishtheater.com
