Enjoy this full final performance from The 2022 96-Hour Opera Project: Stories that Resonate!

Title: The Promise
Composer: Carlos Castro
Librettist: Diana Solomon-Glover
Story Partner: Atlanta History Center

Soprano: Tiffany Uzoije
Tenor: Timothy Miller
Pianist: Justin Maxey
Director: J. L. Reed

Artist statement:
"Words begging to be heard and stories shouting to be told inspire me to write and the threads of African American heroism interwoven into our illustrious American tapestry — tales of men and women who give their last measure to push an obstinate nation toward its loftier tenets — are the very stuff of opera.

During the Civil War, nearly two hundred thousand African American men fought to free this country from the evils of chattel slavery. Many of their own words survive to this day and we are fortunate enough to have read them or seen their narratives dramatized on stage and in film. Some of their stories live through the artifacts they touched leaving us to wonder who shed tears of joy upon their return or how their ancestral brilliance traveled generations to ignite our resolve in our own time of trial. In examining the collection of relics from the U.S. Colored Troops curated by The Atlanta History Center, composer Carlos Castro and I were awed by their symbolism. They lend irrefutable credence to our current social reckoning for, across the ages, they shout that 'Black Lives Matter.'"