Rehearsals for Shelton Laurel: An Appalachian Opera
By Lauren Stepp
The Bardo Arts Center at Western Carolina University (WCU) will present a world premiere of Shelton Laurel: An Appalachian Opera on Saturday, January 24, at 7:30 p.m. Rooted in the turbulent history of Madison County during the Civil War, the one-night-only performance blends original composition, historical research and literary inspiration to illuminate one of Western North Carolina’s most painful chapters.
The opera is the work of WCU professor and composer Damon Sink, who was inspired by Ron Rash’s poem “At Shelton Laurel.” The poem is rooted in the events of the Shelton Laurel Massacre, when 13 men and boys suspected of Union sympathy were executed by Confederate soldiers. In Rash’s telling, the narrator is a young Confederate deserter hiding in a cave and writing a letter to his sister, hoping to leave it on her pillow while she sleeps.
“I chose to build one of the opera’s main characters around this young man, imagining his reluctance and dread being conscripted to fight for the Confederacy, possibly having very little allegiance to the cause of the seceding states and very likely in a state of trauma or disassociation as he was writing that letter,” says Sink.
Musically, Sink avoided mimicking traditional mountain styles and instead developed a tonal palette influenced by American composers such as Aaron Copland and Randall Thompson. “My responsibility as a composer is to craft melodies, harmonies and phrases that serve the emotion of the story and do not fight the rhythms of the language,” he says.
The production is directed by WCU professor Isaiah Feken, who approaches the opera’s emotional weight with a focus on authenticity. “We have a duty not to ourselves but to the music and the people we are representing onstage,” he says.
Guided by that sense of responsibility, Feken sees the opera as both a historical reckoning and a contemporary conversation. The themes that anchor the story—loyalty, division and the bonds between neighbors—extend beyond their 19th-century setting, inviting audiences to engage with the human questions at the heart of the work.
“I hope those audience members specifically leave discussing how opera is a living, breathing genre—that it is a medium capable of telling stories in unique and important ways,” says Feken. “I also hope they ask themselves a core question presented in a central scene of the show, ‘And, who decides? Just who my neighbor is, and who is not? Who tells me: Love this man, but hate the other?’”
The Bardo Arts Center is located on the campus of Western Carolina University at 199 Centennial Drive, Cullowhee. The box office is open Tuesday through Friday from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., with extended hours on Thursdays until 7 p.m. Tickets may be purchased any time at arts.wcu.edu/tickets.
