In a new opera, a life in music and a struggle with memory loss intertwine

Soprano Lucy Shelton has premiered more than 100 new works in a decades-long career as a concert and recital artist. "I haven't spent my time as an opera singer," Shelton, 80, explained in a video chat last month. "I preferred vocal chamber music, and mostly new music where I worked with living composers." But this week, Shelton will do something she has only done once before in her long, decorated career: premiere an opera. She stars in Lucidity by composer Laura Kaminsky and librettist David Cote, in a debut production presented by On Site Opera that opens tonight and runs through Saturday at New York City's Abrons Arts Center.

Signing on to Lucidity was an easy decision for Shelton thanks to her longtime friendship with Kaminsky, which dates back to the 1980s. "Laura wanted to write something for me," Shelton explained. In 2019, Kaminsky encouraged Shelton to put on a 75th birthday recital at New York City's Merkin Hall. "I thought that might be the last time I would perform on stage," Shelton recalled. "The fact that I still get to do this is scary but brings me so much joy."

The plot of Lucidity revolves around Lili, a former opera singer struggling with memory loss. "I'm the same age as the character," Shelton acknowledged with a laugh. "Anytime I forget anything in my daily life, I just think, 'Well I'm just practicing my part.' " In October, Shelton spoke with NPR alongside Kaminsky, Cote and her castmate mezzo-soprano Blythe Gaissert, who plays Dr. Klugman, a neuroscientist who abandoned a burgeoning career as a singer for a more certain professional path. The rest of Lucidity's cast of four includes baritone Eric McKeever, who plays Lili's adopted son Dante, and soprano Christina María Castro, who plays Sunny, a clarinetist Dr. Klugman hires to provide Lili music therapy.

Kaminsky, 68, also relates to the characters in Lucidity. "I was kind of Dr. Klugman in reverse because I was a psychology major, but I just wanted to write music," she observed. Kaminsky's active, international career as a chamber music composer changed forever in 2014 when she broke into the world of contemporary opera with As One. Written with librettists Mark Campbell and Kimberly Reed, As One is based on Reed's life and tells the story of a transgender woman's journey to self-acceptance. The opera became a stalwart, and has been produced over 60 times in the United States since its premiere. Lucidity is Kaminsky's seventh opera, and all of these follow As One's lead in telling topical, realistic stories about individual self-discovery and the relationships between people.

Librettist David Cote initially approached Kaminsky in 2014 after seeing a production of As One at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. "I thought, 'Laura has a beautiful compositional voice'," Cote recalled, "and As One was a very lyrical, concise and direct emotional expression of opera that I wanted to be a part of." Kaminsky added, "I didn't really know him and his work, but then, in 2015, I saw his opera The Scarlet Ibis [composed by Stefan Weisman] and I thought that the storytelling was evocative and compelling."

It took time for the pair to arrive at the story that would become Lucidity. "David came to me with multiple ideas for grand operas," Kaminsky explained, "but creatively I live in a very intimate world." Kaminsky's operas usually feature small casts, a handful of instruments and relatable stories that invite the audience into the narrative. As she explained, "For me, the idea of a personal story was crucial — if David and I couldn't get there, we weren't going to work together." The duo found the seed for Lucidity's plot in their shared grief, as Cote and Kaminsky both lost loved ones to extended illnesses around the time their collaboration began. "As we developed Lucidity, it became clearer that we were really drawing on our personal histories," Cote said. "Laura, with her father who had dementia, and I, as caregiver to my wife in her final few months."

From this experience, they created a piece that deals with the sacrifices and sensitivities that emerge from the conflict between caring for one's family and pursuing one's dreams. This theme comes to a head for each character in different ways. Lili and Dante argue over his decision to abandon piano performance to take care of his mother. Sunny fights with her parents over her choice to work as a musician. And, Dr. Klugman, an old music school classmate of Dante's, confronts the emotional fallout of her choice to pursue science over singing.

One anchor of Lili's story in Lucidity takes the form of recurring references to Franz Schubert's 1828 composition The Shepherd On The Rock that appear in Kaminsky's score and Cote's libretto. In the opera's second scene, Lili's mounting cognitive challenges are made clear when she struggles to perform the work, which she once had memorized. And, later, Lili defiantly listens to a recording of the piece alone, on headphones to avoid a disagreement with Dante.

That recording carries its own specific meaning. As director Sarah Meyers explained over email, "It is only later in the opera, as the walls are beginning to deteriorate between the characters, that the audience gets to hear the Schubert recording." What the audience hears is actually Shelton singing Shepherd in a recording she made decades ago. The characters on stage, of course, hear a younger Lili, fully in command of her power. "I find it very important that this recording opens the first scene in the opera in which all four characters are present simultaneously," Meyers said. "The music brings them together."

Lucidity's score is characteristic of the distinctly expressionistic style displayed in Kaminsky's other operas. In an aria that opens Lucidity's final scene, Sunny finally demands that her parents accept her choice as a musician. Soprano Christina María Castro's solo part alternates between angular bursts, accompanied by rhythmically energetic textures in the ensemble, and long, tender melodies. And the aria's instrumentation -- voice, clarinet and piano -- provides another subtle reference to Shepherd On The Rock.

After Lucidity's premiere in New York this week, the opera embarks on a national tour, first to Seattle Opera on November 21-24 and then to Houston's Opera In The Heights on February 21-23, 2025. Select audiences around the country have already heard parts of Lucidity at unique previews organized by neuroscientists who are interested in the piece's scientific subject matter. "We hope the opera inspires urgency into the need for research [to understand] the mechanisms underlying dementia," Dr. Rui Costa, CEO of the Allen Institute, wrote in an email. Mezzo-soprano Blythe Gaissert performed scenes from Lucidity at a special presentation Dr. Costa organized in Seattle this March, and noticed the music's impact on the audience. "I think people are surprised by how much they connect to something they haven't personally experienced," she explained.

Many Americans can relate to the complexities of age and taking care of aging parents, friends and other family members dealing with dementia, memory loss or more general cognitive decline. Architect Charles Renfro, a longtime friend and follower of Kaminsky's work who is a co-sponsor of Lucidity's premiere performances, connected to the opera due to his experience caring for his mother-in-law after she suffered a stroke in 2021. "The subject matter immediately resonated with me," Renfro said, "and I thought, 'Laura, you've done it again, you've hit the nail on the head. You made a piece that no one has dared to make about a topic that needs to be addressed across our cultural spectrum.'"

For Shelton, Lucidity continues a new, unexpected phase of her long career. She premiered her first grand opera in 2021 as 'The Teacher' in Innocence, a role written for her by the late Finnish composer Kaija Saariaho. "I almost didn't accept the part," Shelton recalled, "but it [was] an extraordinary project which will even give me my Met debut in the spring of 2026."

Musically, Shelton's parts in both operas employ a flexible and varied array of vocal techniques to make her performance more expressive. "Of course, Laura's and Kaija's operas are full of sprechstimme, which is something I enjoy and continue to be able to do at my age," Shelton pointed out, referring to a vocal performance technique that falls between singing and speaking. Dramatically, the role of Lili calls on Shelton to stretch herself. "I'm not someone who shows anger or frustration, I don't use words aggressively," Shelton explained. "So I'm enjoying having that in my character." She added, "Dante calls her a 'diva' and I don't think I was ever a real diva."

On Site Opera's music director Geoff McDonald sees Shelton's performance in Lucidity as a showcase for how compelling her abilities continue to be. "Her range of expressivity requires great technical control as well as a certain courage," he explained, "and Lucy has made a career boldly recruiting all her voice can do." Shelton shows us there are some skills only a singer with decades of experience -- lived and performed -- could hope to bring to the stage.