Welcome to the first in our creative reveal series for Lalovavi.
This work imagines a future four centuries ahead, grounded in ancestral memory and propelled by Black creative vision. At the heart of it rises Atlas—an Afrofuturist city built on legacy, healing, and possibility.
Imagining a Future Rooted in Memory
Under the creative vision of librettist Tifara Brown, Lalovavi unfolds in a future where culture has not disappeared—it has deepened. Where innovation and spiritual continuity coexist. Where healing isn’t an afterthought, but a foundation.
Tifara Brown, librettist for Lalovavi
Photo: Philip Groshong
Brown’s approach honors the idea that history is not something left behind but instead is something that lives on. Carried by those who survive, dream, and build. In Atlas, the sacred and the futuristic are not opposites. They stand side by side, breathing the same air, shaping the same sky.
Atlas is not merely a fantasy; instead, it is an affirmation. A world shaped by those who carried memory forward, who believed the future could hold them fully.
Recently on WLWT-TV’s “Let’s Talk Cincy,” Brown and others from the creative team illuminated the soul of this project—exploring themes of ancestral strength, language, and the belief that Black futures are seeded in the brilliance already carried in our bloodlines. This opera does not imagine a world out of reach; it envisions a continuum—one where what has been and what will be are in conversation.
A First Look at Atlas
The creative team kept returning to concepts of breath and stone, spaces that hold sound the way bodies hold memory.
Here are early set renderings of two of Lalovavi’s central environments by scenic designer Steven C. Kemp:
The Ancestral Field in Nunewaks: A glowing expanse where voices of the past move like light across water; where ancestors are felt, not remembered.
The Courtyard of Atlas: A gathering space carved from ritual, stone, and starlight; a home for counsel, ceremony, and collective power.
“I kept returning to breath and stone,” Brown says. “Spaces that hold sound the way bodies hold memory.”
Architecturally, the world blends ancient echo, spiritual geometry, and futuristic luminosity. These are not sets—they are worlds that carry history in their bones. Kemp translated these ideas into form. Rather than decoration, he describes the work as “space that breathes. Structures that listen. Design isn’t backdrop—it’s emotional architecture.”
In the weeks ahead, we’ll continue to reveal more of this world of Lalovavi—its characters and mythic roots, costuming, musical and vocal architecture, the dramaturgical foundation, and the creative process shaping it all.
Build the Legacy with us.
Lalovavi is more than a new opera—it is cultural architecture, community memory, and future-building.
We invite you to walk with us as this world comes alive, and to stand with the artists and storytellers shaping it.
Help bring this vision to the stage.