Octavia Butler's Parable of the Sower, an Opera

"What you touch, you change. What you change, changes you." 

Those lyrics are Octavia Butler’s, the opening lines to her prescient master work Parable of the Sower, from which Toshi Reagon has adapted an extraordinary opera, written and composed with her mother Bernice Johnson Reagon.

 

My friend Maryam Dilakian, a gifted Armenian-American writer whose work I can't wait for you all to read, invited me to see the show with her on the final evening of its New York premiere. I'm so grateful to have been in that sold-out auditorium at Lincoln Center last night, experiencing the opera’s shattering beauty and power to transform. 

As Maryam put it, “Toshi shifts culture. Toshi takes us down South, then throws us forward into the future. Toshi is the future. Her voice, like her mama's voice, is the sound of America's longing. Her message is clear and unwavering. Her humanity is the definition of hypersensitivity and compassion. Toshi is a cultural icon.” 

Last evening, Octavia Butler’s call to revolution was fire on that stage. I felt as if my head was exploding. My heart too.