Coming Full Circle

At the rehearsal, instrument cases lined the chapel pews, and tech workers
in headsets milled about the aisles to check equipment and sound levels for the concert live stream. Kennedy directed without a baton in a dark button-down and glasses, pausing only occasionally with a furrowed brow to tighten a rhythm or adjust balance. 

“What’s so incredible about Omar is that even during the first readings, you could see
the recognition on these musicians’ faces and hear in their playing that they knew how special this piece of music is,” Kennedy says.

The conductor wasn’t the only alum with longstanding ties to the production. Principal cast members included Giddens portraying Julie, an enslaved woman who befriends Omar and implores him to write about his life; tenor Limmie Pulliam ’98 singing as Omar himself; baritone Michael Preacely ’01, portraying both Omar’s brother Abdul and the slave Abe, the latter separated from his son at auction; and bass- baritone Daniel Okulitch ’99 singing as both of Omar’s slave owners, first the vicious, detestable Johnson and later the gentler, more pious Owen. 

Omar represented a full-circle moment: A quarter-century ago, Giddens, Pulliam, Preacely and Okulitch trained together at Oberlin, attending workshops and studio classes and performing alongside one another in the conservatory’s opera productions and scene classes. 

Their careers have taken off in the years since, but they have stayed in touch, and Giddens invited them to be a part of Omar at various stages. She originally wrote the roles of the opera’s two slave owners specifically for Okulitch; Pulliam, meanwhile, was part of the 
opera’s early workshops.

“I’m a big ‘Oberlin mafia’ person,” says Giddens, a North Carolina native who has won two Grammys and a MacArthur “Genius Grant” in addition to her Pulitzer Prize. “There’s so many of us who are doing interesting things and thinking about the world in really interesting ways, and so I’m quite happy to keep dipping in the Oberlin pool.”

Omar's Journey

The idea for Omar originated in conversations around 2015 at the Spoleto Festival USA. Kennedy, who was music director there from 2010 to 2022, and the festival engaged Giddens to craft the opera. (As it turns out, Kennedy’s introduction to Giddens was in this very magazine, via a blurb about her and her group the Carolina Chocolate Drops.) She adapted the libretto herself before bringing in Abels, who scored Jordan Peele’s Get Out, to help orchestrate.

The opera’s first scene takes place in Omar’s village in Futa Tora (modern-day Senegal), where enslavers capture Omar and kill his mother. The story follows Omar’s journey on a slave ship, his auction at the Charleston slave market, and his escape from an abusive plantation owner. Omar is later bought by another plantation owner; in turn, he gives Omar a Bible and attempts to convert him to Christianity. Later, Omar
convert him to Christianity. Later, Omar prays to Allah for understanding, and his mother’s spirit encourages him to write of his experiences and his faith.

Pulliam, a Missouri native who sang as Omar in a chamber adaptation at the Ojai Music Festival, made his Carnegie Hall debut in 2023 with the Oberlin Orchestra and Oberlin choruses, portraying the title role in The Ordering of Moses.  At the December performances, Pulliam portrayed Omar with sensitivity and deep reverence, showcasing a supple, clarion tenor. Especially poignant were his onstage interactions with Giddens, who sang with tender determination as Julie. Pulliam cites as the opera’s emotional cornerstone a scene in which Julie has found Omar’s Kufi, a brimless cap worn by Muslim men.

“Julie tells Omar, ‘My daddy wore a cap like yours,’” Pulliam says. “It was at that moment that Omar realizes that he isn’t alone and that Julie truly understands who he is [and] what his religion is, because her father is also a Muslim. And at the end of her aria, she presents him back with his head cover, and this solidifies their connection.”

Preacely, who calls Pulliam his “big brother” and sang alongside him at the Ojai Music Festival adaptation of Omar, has built a career singing a variety of roles in operas, orchestral concerts, and Broadway productions in the U.S. and internationally, including in an acclaimed European tour of Porgy and Bess. “It’s very rare that I don’t encounter an Obie when I’m on a gig,” Preacely says, noting that he, Pulliam, and Okulitch all trained in the same and Okulitch all trained in the same studio while at Oberlin. 

Even though Okulitch did not participate in Omar’s 2022 premiere for scheduling reasons, he did perform in the San Francisco Opera’s 2023 production and has kept in touch with Giddens and the other vocalists since graduating from Oberlin. Like Pulliam and Preacely, Okulitch has amassed numerous performances with opera companies around the world and several high-profile world premieres, including Charles Wuorinen’s Brokeback Mountain with Teatro Real of Madrid.

The singers’ connections are part of what made the Oberlin production so meaningful. “Dan and I were roommates for a year, and Rhiannon is like a sister to all of us,” says Pulliam. “We have a built- in rapport with each other that I think. allowed us to be even more vulnerable as an artist on stage, to go places emotionally and musically that we might not have in other situations.”

While back on campus, Giddens, Okulitch, and Pulliam visited the Stevenson Dining Hall for old times’ sake. “Rhiannon looked around and goes, ‘Did we really look this young?’” says Pulliam, chuckling. “I said, ‘No, of course we didn’t!’ But obviously we probably did.”

An American Opera

During the dress rehearsal, vocalist Daniel McGrew ’15 tiptoed through the shadows, avoiding creaking floorboards when not singing on stage. “I play a fairly barbarous character,” McGrew says of his role as the slave auctioneer. “He’s kind of the adversarial presence. You kind of go to a different place for a role like this, where you can’t let all the heart-wrenching stuff that’s going on get to you in the moment.” Since graduating from Oberlin, McGrew has earned degrees at Yale University and the University of Michigan and now concentrates on a combination of early music, opera, and musical theater.

As a younger alum in the production, McGrew describes the experience of joining Omar’s long-connected cast as “slightly intimidating” but adds that the other cast members “couldn’t have been more warm and inviting” at the first rehearsal. “The Oberlin experience is a kind of kinship, even for people who may have studied at different times,” McGrew says. “That’s one of the special things about my time there. Oberlin provided space and time for a really thorough investigation into the literature and true collaboration among disciplines.”

Each singer involved in the production acknowledged the opera’s importance as a work of art and as a work of cultural history. “It’s truly a story that needs to be told about our American journey,” says Preacely. Giddens agreed, acknowledging Oberlin’s role in introducing Omar to audiences on campus and in Cleveland.

“This is what really good allyship from institutions looks like,” she says. “Oberlin really wanted to tell Omar’s story, and they wanted the school’s students and people in Cleveland to have exposure to the story, and not because of any kind of performative bull. I think it’s really important to call it out when it happens.”

In the wake of the Oberlin performances, the opera field’s interest in Omar continues to mount. There's nothing yet officially announced, but each singer hinted at additional engagements in their respective roles at additional companies in future seasons. But its resonance at Oberlin was special.

“For all his flaws, [former Oberlin College President Charles] Finney was a famous abolitionist, and to have Omar performed in that chapel was incredible,” Kennedy says. Adds Okulitch: “I’ve been back to Oberlin before for recitals or masterclasses, but this time just felt different. I don’t know how else to put it. I felt a deep appreciation for the time that I spent here [as a student]. That was why it was really nice to be here with people who I’ve been here with, because we could all talk about that and share our feelings about being back. It was really wonderful.”

Jeremy Reynolds ’15 is the classical music critic and fine arts reporter at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and the editor of Opera America Magazine. This story originally appeared in the Spring 2025 issue of the Oberlin Alumni Magazine.

Mezzo-soprano Krysty Swann performs during a sold-out performance of Omar in Finney Chapel on December 6, 2025. Photo by Angelo Merendino. The performance was part of several days of campus-wide programming centered around the opera’s themes. These include lectures and roundtable discussions with members of Oberlin’s faculty, a curated collection of works and student-led discussions at the Allen Memorial Art Museum’s Print Study Room, and special exhibitions at several Oberlin campus libraries. See more photos from these events.