Edmonia Lewis’ life is an American story about a college girl who attains international reputation as a sculptor, beloved and yet tragically forgotten, until her most famous piece is discovered, lost in the brush of a Chicago public park.

EDMONIA, the opera, relates the compelling story of Edmonia Lewis and celebrates this undaunted 19th century Black and Native American (Ojibwe) visual artist who reshaped her artistic identity and in so doing impacted the life and culture of her times. She is one of the most important documented, celebrated Black cultural figures of the 19th century, and yet her story is largely untold, her life forgotten. Composer Bill Banfield engages his prodigious musical prowess to correct this erasure through the epic medium of opera.

The opera originally commissioned in 2000 by Toni Morrison, with collaboration from poet Yusef Komunyakaa, now emerges fully set presenting an artistic rendering of her entire life and activities in Oberlin, Boston, Florence, Italy, and frequent travels and showings in Chicago, San Fransisco, and Philadelphia.

The libretto is loosely based upon the work of Edmonia Lewis scholar Marilyn Richardson. In Richardson's correspondence with Dr. Banfield, she remarks: "Your audience will be entranced, moved, surprised, and impressed. They will, however, also leave with "knowledge" of Lewis that is a creative narrative of fact and fiction. When we first talked, I realized you had re-imagined the historical Lewis, quite appropriately...I really look forward to the premiere and continuing to raise up EL (Edmonia Lewis) and her life and work in many ways and forms! And PLEASE keep sending me the wonderful music!"

The work will be performed by an ensemble of singers, actors and orchestra. Banfield has created his opera as a sweeping song cycle revealing poetic renderings of the people, times and places that impacted Edmonia’s artistic, professional and emotional life.  "My challenge with Edmonia was to present a historical figure, her inner story, in the context of a balance of hybrid art that mirrors contemporary songs, operatic convention, presenting a storyline of actions with songs, letters, narrator, choral pieces, acting, dancing, images  of art and places, lots of music within stylistic diversity, making it all adaptable..”

Driving the narrative, is the question... what happens or what we do we miss, if we don’t discover our rich heritages and the people who help to cultivate culture, all around us?  In Banfield’s words: “God only knows the meaning of what, who, when and why treasures are lost then found. Our only guess is, the best will rise from truth that is pressed into the ground.”