World premiere chancel opera will honor longtime UA opera director Ed White
The world premiere opera "Naaman" took a year to compose, though its gestation began almost four decades ago.
First Presbyterian Church in Tuscaloosa commissioned the chancel opera from composer K. Lee Scott, who sang in the church's choir in the 1970s, while he was still a student. Scott earned two degrees in choral music from Frederick Prentice at the University of Alabama, studying composition under Paul Hedwall.
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"Back in the early '80s, the economy was not doing very well, and I thought, well if I don't go ahead and establish a career as a composer, it's gonna be hard to do," said Scott, who's also conducting the 3 p.m. Sunday production of "Naaman."
Though he has worked adjunct faculty jobs at UA, the University of Alabama at Birmingham, Samford University and Birmingham-Southern College, and part-time as a church musician, Scott has worked as a full-time composer, writing church anthems and other works on commission.
His hymn tunes can be found in more than 20 hymnals over four continents, with 300 published compositions including anthems, works for solo voice, organ, brass, and orchestra, and major works such as "Requiem," "Band of Angels," commemorating the 50th anniversary of the Birmingham church bombing, and "The Suffering Servant," based on Isaiah 53.
"Naaman" is based in part on an opera Scott co-wrote almost 40 years ago, originally written on an old Underwood typewriter, built around the conversion story from II Kings, chapters five and six, in which an Aram general travels to Israel to be cured of leprosy, and in the journey, becomes a follower of the Jewish god.
"Naaman" is being performed in honor of Ed White, director of opera at UA from 1975-2001. White, who died in 2020, with his wife Karen was also active in choral music at First Presbyterian.
The Ed and Karen White Endowment helped pay for the work, which includes not only the yearlong composition, but Gary R. Smoke's engraving — music notation at high quality for mechanical reproduction — which runs to just short of 1,000 pages, plus the orchestral musicians, costumes, props, makeup and other technical requirements.
Former students of White's, many of whom have gone on to professional music careers, are performing all the roles, save Bonnie Blackwell, a current UA study who's singing the part of an adviser, and working as understudy.
Hope Koehler sings the pivotal role of Miriam, a servant to Naaman who points the general toward Israel. Dewin Tibbs performs Naaman, and Jennifer Bryant Pederson plays Sardia, Naaman's wife. Doff Procter, director of the Alabama Choir School, serves as narrator.
Dee Hamner will be Jehoram, the king of Israel in Samaria. With Blackwell, Leslie Sheppard and Chip White will be servants and advisors. David O'Steen will be Elisha, the prophet; Walter Jones will play Gehazi, Elisha's servant; Danny Potts will be messenger to Jehoram; Everett McCorvey will play Naaman's servant; and Melanie Claypool Jonas and Ellen Woodward Potts are solo soprano and solo mezzo-soprano, respectively.
Knowing those voices, but keeping in mind "Naaman" might have a life beyond this weekend, Scott wrote challenging though not impossible parts.
"f you can come up with a story that has six or seven principles and then a few other smaller roles, you can involve the choir," Scott said. "So hopefully this can be done, not only by colleges, Christian or secular, but by churches."
Opera's roots can be traced to the church, from liturgical dramas to mystery ― or miracle ― plays. Gian Carlo Menotti's "Amahl and the Night Visitors," about three kings visiting the Christ child, is the most famous of contemporary chancel operas, and "Naaman" shares some of that terrain, both thematically, with a miracle healing, and melodically.
"Certainly, there's a (Menotti) influence in my tonal language in this one. It's modern, but not too modern. Tonally, the thing that the singers are finding out that I'm relatively conservative harmonically," Scott said, "but rhythmically, it's very challenging. "
Naaman drew Scott for a number of reasons. First, it's fresh material.
"They don't need another arrangement of 'Amazing Grace,' " Scott said.
Second, the heroic figure, though a powerful man, listens to servants. Naaman offers the prophet Elisha gold and silver supplied by his king ― an amount roughly $250,000 today ― but Elisha sends a message telling Naaman to bathe in the river Jordan seven times.
" 'Well, I thought surely he would come out waving his hand over me, and I'd be healed.' So (Naaman) goes off in a rage," Scott said, " and it's his servants who go up to him and say, 'Father, if he had told you some great thing to do, would not you have done it? How much more that you would wash and be cleansed?' "
Scott finds it telling the servants care enough to break through to him, indicating his worth.
"It really is a story of his conversion, because he becomes a believer in Jehovah and in the Jewish God then," Scott said. "And so as one writer said, it's one of the most complete conversion stories in all of scripture. He's humbled."
It's also a timeless, modern tale, he added, of a man who had everything, yet in danger of losing it all. Seeking desperate measures, he finds deeper meaning.
The world premiere of "Naaman" will be performed at 3 p.m. Sunday in the First Presbyterian Church, 900 Greensboro Ave. in downtown Tuscaloosa. Admission is free.
To learn more about Scott's work, see the doctoral dissertations available online: The Choral Music of Keaton Lee Scott with a Conductor’s Analysis of Requiem, Damion Womack, The University of South Carolina Library, 2016; and The Choral Music of Keaton Lee Scott: a Comprehensive Study on an Alabama Native, Christopher Quinton Harris, The University of Alabama Libraries, 2018.
Reach Mark Hughes Cobb at mark.cobb@tuscaloosanews.com.
This article originally appeared on The Tuscaloosa News: World premiere opera to honor Ed White on Sunday at First Presbyterian
