About the work
Lalovavi is an Afrofuturist grand opera in three acts, with music by Kevin Day and a libretto by Tifara Brown — the first opera for both creators. It is the inaugural work of Cincinnati Opera's Black Opera Project, a multimillion-dollar initiative funded in large part by the Mellon Foundation that commissions Black artists to create new operas celebrating Black American history and experience. The piece was developed over several years through Opera Fusion: New Works, the workshop partnership between Cincinnati Opera and CCM. Its world premiere took place on July 9 and 11, 2026, at Cincinnati Music Hall, with Kevin Miller conducting the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra and Brittany Olivia Logan singing the title role. Written primarily in English, the opera also incorporates Tut (Tutnese) — a language developed by enslaved African Americans as a covert means of learning to read and write; "lalovavi" is the Tut word for "love".
Plot
Set roughly 400 years in the future, in the year 2119, the opera unfolds in Atlas — the city formerly known as Atlanta. In Atlas, status and currency are determined by Syndica, a rare gene that grants vitality and longevity. Persephone, the youngest daughter of the Primus (ruler) of Atlas, discovers that she carries a version of the gene conferring immortality. Betrayed by her own family, she must flee for her life. Her escape leads her into an unfamiliar wilderness of talking beasts and bioluminescent forests and becomes an epic journey of self-discovery: Persephone uncovers a hidden past, grows into a warrior and liberator — the "Lalovavi" of Atlas — and comes to understand the true meaning of love and her power to shape her own destiny.
Cultural significance
Lalovavi is considered one of the first grand operas built on an Afrofuturist theme and launches Cincinnati Opera's Black Opera Project — among the most ambitious efforts by a U.S. opera company to place Black stories and creators at its center. The project grew out of conversations involving bass-baritone Morris Robinson, who noted how few operas portray African American culture in a positive, modern, and self-determined light. For Kevin Day — an acclaimed composer, conductor, and jazz pianist — it marks an operatic debut, and his score fuses jazz, contemporary classical, R&B, and soul. The work drew particular attention for its use of Tut: by bringing this language, born of resistance to slavery, onto the grand stage, the opera binds future vision to cultural memory — a core aim of Afrofuturist storytelling.