What the Spirits Show: Cal’s Aria

for Mezzo & Piano

2023

6 minutes

Score available for purchase

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.