OperaDelaware presents Derrick Wang’s Fearless

Inspired by the life of pioneering 20th-century aviator Hazel Ying Lee, Wang has cultivated fertile storytelling ground. One of eight children, Lee was born in Oregon in 1912. Determined to become a pilot, she joined the Chinese Flying Club of Portland (where she met her future husband) and took flying lessons with famed aviator Al Greenwood. In 1932, Lee became the first Asian American woman to receive a pilot’s license.

When she and her family returned to China, Lee flew commercial planes and was in Guangzhou when Japanese forces bombed the city in 1937. The family fled to Hong Kong, but Lee returned to the United States, where she was one of the first women accepted into the Women Airforce Service Pilot (WASP) unit that trained at Avenger Field in Sweetwater, Texas. Lee flew transport planes during WWII and died in the line of duty at age 32.

A historic life takes flight

Based on (and embroidering) Lee’s astonishing life, Fearless opens in Portland, where school-aged Iris (Karen Vuong) is writing a letter to a magazine describing her favorite American, her sister Hazel. Their brother Victor (Suchan Kim) agrees to take Iris to the department store where Hazel works as an elevator operator, overcoming the objections of their traditionalist Mother (Alice Chung).

At the store, Hazel (Ariana Maubach) is well-regarded and happy in her job. But in this unfamiliar milieu, Iris has the first of several of the family’s encounters with prejudice and racism. Hazel shares with Iris her longing to fly, and from there Fearless goes forward to trace the arc of Lee’s flying career amid the fortunes and misfortunes of her family.

Song and story

Wang has filled Fearless with soaring melodies, memorable songs and leitmotifs, and masterful orchestration. Though clearly an opera, the work carries overtones of those mid-20th-century great American musicals that combine singing excellence with a compelling story and vivid characters. Here, each of the opera’s four principals is given affecting and well-crafted arias, all delivered with vocal authority and dramatic force.

Five additional (and excellent) singers embody multiple, often cleverly written characters: Emily Margevich (Soprano 1), Toni Marie Palmertree (Soprano 2), Gina Perregrino (Mezzo), Luke Norvell (Tenor), and Ben Wager (Baritone) have substantive roles that both advance and deepen the story line.

The nine-woman chorus, under the direction of George Hemcher, also is pivotal to the action. They are periodically heard offstage and appear onstage as department store patrons and Hazel’s flying colleagues, among others. The well-prepared ensemble was especially effective in the Act I segment about the WASP training.

Fearless opens with a cinematic overture played by an excellent OperaDelaware orchestra, conducted by Benjamin Makino in his company debut. There was no sense that this music was new or unfamiliar; it was played with authority and confidence, though sometimes the singers were overpowered (especially Maubach) in their lower ranges.

Inventive and effective

Director Malena Dayen (also in a company debut) created inventive and effective staging. At the opening, the company arrives one by one until the stage is fully populated, and the WASP cohort sections were especially crisp and interesting. Throughout, atmospheric montages of actual period video (designed by Guadalupe Marin Burgin) were projected on scenic designer John Raley’s well-designed airplane hangar. Its excellent (and usable) playing space also served as a palette for the evocative lighting of Tláloc López-Watermann (who made an elevator rise just with light) and Howard Tsvi Kaplan’s period costumes.

In his introductory program note, Wang listed all of his 15 titled songs, something often provided for musicals but very seldom for opera. It was a very welcome addition. Some of the beautiful arias include “Golden Mountain” (Mother); “Up in the Air” (Hazel’s introductory elevator song); “Is This Your (Our) Country?”, reprised by several characters throughout; and the rousing title theme “Fearless”.

Wang also crafted dramatic “set pieces” that both entertain and advance the action. For example, Act I’s department store segment, with its lively libretto and cleverly staged chorus, includes Hazel’s aria in the elevator that makes that ubiquitous mechanical apparatus into a metaphor for flight and a soprano aria (Margevich) that begins charmingly but turns into a chilling exploration of racism, a theme that periodically bubbles to the surface.

Grounded and soaring

Fearless could benefit from some judicious editing and musical compression, though the opening night audience sat riveted to the end. The narrative arc might be tightened, and a somewhat oblique framing device and a concluding plot twist might be clarified, things that can only be accomplished once a work has first been staged. Wang, who dedicated the opera to “my family—past, present, and future”, ends not with the expected reprise of the stirring title song but with unexpected intimacy and a reflective turn, a bold compositional choice.

Overall, Fearless is soulfully written, melodic without being cloying, and Wang’s libretto, filled with actual and slant rhymes, is poetic and moving. I hope this work can settle into the operatic canon. But in OperaDelaware’s premiere production—thoughtfully staged, excellently played, and exploring new dramatic territory—the entire company leaned wholeheartedly into this composer’s vision, one both grounded and soaring.