How Rhiannon Giddens and Michael Abels turned an enslaved man’s narrative into an opera, and then to a full-length play
Giddens and Abels (Photo: Kristin L. Sperberg-McQueen/Courtesy of the Blanton Museum of Art)
For Rhiannon Giddens, the day is done with a great deal of exhaustion. Her feet are pounding the pavement of the Broadway stage, a place she’s been coming to for the past 30 years with its familiar scents and rhythms, like the smell of bacon underfoot and the sound of the city’s crescendoing buzz. But like many New York City fans, it’s not the grandiose, show-stopping musicals that draw her there, but the more intimate, intimate, low-key works. “I like pieces that have a low level of complexity,” she says, taking a sip of steaming hot coffee. She’s sitting in the corner of the small, dark coffee bar she and Michael Abels, and artistic collaborator, have found on Broadway. “I like a lot of very dark, really challenging pieces,” she explains. “I like the way that opera has that, and also some of the way songs work.”
Rhiannon Giddens (Photo: Kristin L. Sperberg-McQueen/Courtesy of the Blanton Museum of Art)
It’s a sentiment that’s become more of a reality with the new Broadway musical, The Addams Family, and the upcoming adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby. But for now, Giddens and Abels are settled in to the corner, sipping their hot beverages and talking about all of the work that they have coming up.
The last time they were together was on a Sunday afternoon in the spring of 2014, after the play The Addams Family, which Giddens and Abels created together, had opened at the Goodman Theatre. Two weeks later, they were back in New York