But artists have always had the power to hold up mirrors for us: they can show us who we really are. They can tell the truth when others cannot. Here in Virginia, in two towns still struggling to reconcile the soaring ideals of our nation’s founding with a history of racism and exclusion, a group of artists answered the call to commemorate America’s 250th birthday. The Charlottesville Ballet and Lynchburg’s Opera on the James together built an ambitious, multi-disciplinary concert honoring the 250-year arc of American democracy through music, dance, poetry, and visual art. Sixteen vignettes foregrounded Virginia voices from 1776 to the Civil War, the Civil Rights Movement, and into the present, in a celebratory evening both thought-provoking and artistically satisfying. 

The evening opened, of course, with the national anthem sung generously in the rich voices of artists from Opera on the James: Allen Adair, baritone; Chris Alfonso, tenor; Crystal Glenn, soprano; and Hannah Hall, mezzo-soprano. And while many of the vignettes featured American flags, red, white and blue, and other familiar patriotic tunes, the work’s depth and richness unfolded gradually as it honored American voices and histories many may never have known or heard about.

Take, for example, the composer Amy Beach (1867–1944), the first successful female American composer of large-scale works, whose soulful Romance for Violin and Piano, Op. 23, was performed with velvety ease by violinist Virgil Moore and pianist Thomas Getty. Beach, a child prodigy, muted her performing career during her marriage to conform to the social constraints placed on women at the time, but after her husband’s death in 1910, she resumed touring and performing across the US and Europe. Though no voice or dancing accompanied this work, the Romance evoked a sense of longing as a keystone for the evening’s exploration of American history.