What the Spirits Show: Cal’s Aria

for Mezzo & Piano

2023

6 minutes

Commissioned by the Washington National Opera at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts and first produced at the Kennedy Center during the 2022/2023 season.

Music by Silen Wellington (they/he)
Libretto by Walken Schweigert (he/him)

Calamus is a teenage artist with a fantastical imagination and endless curiosity. Rather than easels or clay, Calamus' canvas is their own body. With the aid of a magic elixir, Calamus expresses their true spirit by bending into different forms and offering the poetry of transformation. 

This aria takes sections of the beginning and end of the 20-minute opera, where Calamus is drinking the elixir and settling into a sense of self and their place within the world. Evolving from an exploration of vowels and overtones into poetic text, Calamus ends the aria by welcoming their true self into a healing world.