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Huang Ruo
An American Soldier
opera in 2 acts
2.2.2.2-2.2.2.1-2perc-str (2023)| Duration | 60' |
|---|---|
| Commission | New version (2024) co-commissioned by the Boston Lyric Opera and Perelman Performing Arts Center (PAC NYC), premiered at PAC NYC, May 12 – 19, 2024. *Full-length version commissioned by the Opera Theatre of St. Louis for its New Works, Bold Voices, premiered in 2018. *A 60-minute version of the opera was commissioned by Washington National Opera and premiered there in 2014 as part of WNO’s American Opera Initiative. |
| Premiere | May 12-19, 2024; Perelman Performing Arts Center, NYC; Carolyn Kuan, conductor • Chay Yew, director |
| Publisher | Schott Music |
| Staged performances of this work require licensing. | |
| Rental | Performance materials are available for order: |
Media
Program Note
In 2013, David Henry Hwang was contacted by Elizabeth OuYang, a civil rights attorney and community advocate who represented the family of Danny Chen. Pvt. Chen, a Chinatown native, had enlisted in the U.S. Army and was sent to the Kandahar region of Afghanistan, where he suffered racial attacks and egregious abuse at the hands of his military superiors, leading to his death in 2011. Elizabeth and the Chen family were working tirelessly to keep his story alive as a memorial to Danny and to press for reforms in our nation’s military. Might David be interested in writing a play about Pvt. Chen?
Huang Ruo had been commissioned by Washington National Opera to write a one-act chamber opera. We were looking to work together and agreed that opera felt like the right form to tell a story where the moral issues felt so clear, where the hero his antagonists were so boldly defined. Our one-hour version premiered in Washington, D.C. in 2014, less than 3 years after Danny’s death. Given the time parameters, David worked from articles and transcripts and we created a “docu-opera” around the court-martial trials. Even that early version found its emotional core in a mother-son story, between Danny and his mother Su Zhen Chen, who struggles to grieve, remember, and fight for her fallen son.
Opera Theatre of St. Louis invited us to expand our one-act into a full-length opera, giving us a rare opportunity to deepen the human relationships and dig deeper into the questions raised by our original piece. What does it mean to be an American? Who is immediately accepted and who must continually prove they are not the enemy? How does our American creed serve both to inspire us and to spotlight our failures? Does our national motto, E Pluribus Unum (“From the many, one”) still resonate today with a large swath of our electorate? At the premiere of this new version in 2018, we made a commitment to the Chen family that we would try our best to bring this show to NYC, where Danny was born and raised.
Thanks to PAC-NYC, that dream has come true. In 2024, we open this show after a pandemic spike in anti-AAPI violence reinforced what the history of this country has continually demonstrated: Asians remain perpetual foreigners whose acceptance in America is conditional and can be revoked at any time. Today, Danny’s story both evokes the past and feels like a harbinger of the future.
We are grateful to PAC-NYC and the brilliant creative team who have come together to bring Danny’s story to new life. We are also profoundly thankful to the Chen family, which has supported and embraced our show from the start, even when doing so has required extraordinary strength and courage.
We hope we have justified their trust and faith by bringing Pvt. Danny Chen back home at last.
– Huang Ruo & David Henry Hwang
2024, NYC
