I Am A Dreamer Who No Longer Dreams

On October 23 & 25, Resonance Works will open its 2020-2021 season with I Am a Dreamer Who No Longer Dreams at the New Hazlett Theater on Pittsburgh’s North Side.  A collaboration between composer Jorge Sosa and creator and librettist Cerise Lim Jacobs, this acclaimed new opera champions the near perpetual struggles of immigrants and the often overlooked complexities of their stories. Building on its reputation for bringing the most important new American music to Pittsburgh audiences, Resonance Works becomes only the second company to present this celebrated new work. Dreamer held its world premiere in Boston in September 2019 under the auspices of Jacobs’ White Snake Projects, a company in the vanguard of developing new American opera. Having been involved in this exciting project since 2018, Resonance Works’ Artistic Director Maria Sensi Sellner was a part of the development and workshop of the opera, and subsequently conducted the world premiere. As such, Resonance Works’ upcoming production will bring many of the original artists to Pittsburgh while featuring the Pittsburgh Girls Choir as the ensemble. 

The story of the opera concerns an undocumented Mexican immigrant named Rosa, a “dreamer” who is waiting in jail before being deported, and the relationship she develops with her court-appointed attorney Singa, an ethnically Chinese immigrant from Indonesia. With parallels to the varied narratives of immigration explored in Resonance Work’s 2019 season opener, the national anthems,  I Am a Dreamer Who No Longer Dreams harmonizes profoundly with the multi-ethnic tapestry that defines Western Pennsylvania and the industrial history of Pittsburgh in particular.

Of the world premiere in Boston, I Care If You Listen (.com) remarked that “Jorge Sosa and Cerise Lim Jacobs’ collaboration was enormously successful, as their closeness to the subject matter and empathetic nature illuminated the entirety of the work,” while the Boston Globe offered, “Jacobs’s collaboration with Mexican-born composer Jorge Sosa might be White Snake’s least logistically complex affair to date. It’s also the best.”