The Rosina Project: A Hip-Hopera for the Masses by Khalid Y. Long

Embedded writer Khalid Y. Long offers his first reflection from inside the rehearsal process of BraveSoul Movement’s The Rosina Project: An Immersive Hip-Hopera

Photo by: Philip Dembinski

Foreground (from left): Orlando ‘Juice’ De Leon, Peyton 'Skrollz' Yang, Lani ‘JiigSixx’ Anderson, K. F. Jacques, Keisha Janae, Sophia 'Sophul' Bevilacqua.

Background (from left): Pinqy Ring, Daniel "BRAVEMONK" Haywood, Oliver Fade

In July 2021, I attended several rehearsals for The Rosina Project: An Immersive Hip-Hopera. It was my first time since early 2020 that I had stepped foot into a brick-and-mortar building with the intent to watch a live, in-person rehearsal. The Covid-19 Pandemic shut down the world, and the performing arts community took a hard hit. So much so that we are still wondering what the future will bring for the performing arts. So, when I received the invitation to write about The Rosina Project, I first asked: Is this a Zoom project? My tolerance for Zoom-produced productions had reached an all-time low. With that, I had recently decided to take a break from all-things virtual, especially after spending the past year and a half with black boxes staring at me during my several courses as a professor of theatre. So, again, when Kelsa Robinson and Daniel “BRAVEMONK” Haywood – the dynamic duo of BraveSoul Movement – invited me to put together some words about The Rosina Project, I said, “yes,” because, for nothing else, it was an in-person, live performance. And this is perhaps the self-interest reason I obliged. However, I did not realize at the time that I would be privy to a cultural immersion of hip-hop, opera, movement, and storytelling.

Admittedly, my scholar-dramaturg interest was piqued when I heard the term “hip-hopera.” At first glance, the phrase sounds like the blending of hip-hop and opera. Yes! That is correct. And, however, it’s a bit more complex. Well, not so much complex rather than there needs to be more of a nuanced approach when using the term hip-hopera. This is especially true as the term can identify a song or an entire theatrical genre. Not only is the idiom fraught with multiple meanings, but the history of the term’s usage is just as blurry. For instance, the term hip-hopera came into vogue as early as 1994 with rapper Volume 10’s debut album, Hip Hopera. Concerning music productions (i.e., albums, etc.), the phrase hip-hopera was also used as the title of a song by Bounty Killer featuring The Fugees. However, the term entered into America’s cultural lexicon much earlier. Writer and musician Peter Watrous, for instance, can be credited as one of the first – if not the first – to put the phrase in print with his 1985 Vogue essay, “Hip-Hopera” where he discusses Malcolm McLaren’s mixing of the aria, “Un bel di vedremo,” from Puccini’s opera Madam Butterfly with a “rap narration.”

Following suit, contemporary artists continued to employ hip-hopera as branding for their art. One example is Bronx-based opera singer Marie-Claire Giraud. In a 2000 interview with David Kirby for The New York Times, Giraud commented that hip-hop and opera are often seen as disparate art forms. Giraud contends, however, that “They are so similar. They were just composed in two entirely different time frames,” noting that opera composers “wrote about everything tragic in the world, about bloodshed, death, intrigue, murder, incest, revenge.” This, according to Giraud, “is the same thing” as rap. Another contemporary artist who uses the designate of hip-hopera is Nigerian American artist Babatunde Akinboboye. Like Giraud, Akinboboye is a classically trained singer with experience as a stage artist in noted operas. He came to prominence when a 2018 video of him performing in his car went viral, thus earning him the moniker #HipHoperaGuy.

Hip-hopera is hard to define. It is also hard to precisely narrow down an artistic medium or genre to which it belongs. The reason is that throughout the years, hip-hopera defied categorization. Thus one surmises that hip-hopera, like its predecessor hip-hop, has evolved into a genre that can be applied to various artistic mediums such as theatrical performances. In this vein, creative personnel – be they composer, librettist, choreographer, rap lyricist, or hip-hop aesthetician – come together to create theatrical performances further shaped by movement, acoustics, and orality as the heightened constituents that drive a narrative. That is precisely the case with The Rosina Project.

The Rosina Project is an original adaptation of Gioachino Antonio Rossini’s (1792-1868) opera buffa The Barber of Seville. As a hip-hopera, the production comingles MCs and street-dance artists with opera singers, accompanied by a live DJ and Beatboxer. George Cederquist, Artistic Director of the Chicago Fringe Opera, shared that somewhere in 2014, he thought heavily about “Rossini’s music and the harmonic rhythm of his music” and the driving pulsating beat and progression” of Rossini’s music. For this reason, Cederquist was initially inspired to blend Rossini’s music with electronic dance music. However, he did not favor an early attempt at an adaptation. Down the road, Cederquist was introduced to K.F. Jacques, a trained classical singer specializing in merging opera and hip-hop, and Kelsa “K-Soul” Robinson and BRAVEMONK. Out of this union was born the idea for a hip-hop rendition of The Barber of Seville. Jacques states, “We didn’t have necessarily the characters or storylines figured out yet, but we knew exactly what we wanted to do, and how we wanted to approach it.” The creative team grew to include ‘Kechi (composer) and Mikey to the P (lead writer). And while some folks have specific titles, The Rosina Project was undoubtedly created through a collaborative, ensemble-driven process.

Photo by: Philip Dembinski

Foreground (from left): Daniel "BRAVEMONK" Haywood, Lani ‘JiigSixx’ Anderson, Austin Fillmore, Background (from left): Andy Aughenbaugh, Anyi Ahlation, Oliver Fade, and Pinqy Ring

During one of the rehearsals, I had an opportunity to also chat with Jacques, who, in addition to his role on the creative team, plays the character Figaro. During our conversation, he asserted that The Rosina Project was an “opera for the masses.” This phrasing stayed with me for it denotes the belief that theatrical performances – be it a hip hop theatre piece, a classic opera, or a contemporary scripted drama – are multifarious and can be for anyone. This notion further gestures towards the adaptive qualities of the performing arts wherein artists for centuries have modified some earlier performance or artistic medium to become a new or blended representation. As Kevin H. Whitmore puts it, “All cultural production if reproduction” which “might be seen as part of the larger tradition of signifyin(g)—rewriting through reference, repetition, and revision for the purpose of creating new levels of meaning.” Seen in this light, a theatrical piece can be adapted, as history has shown, with the possibility of expanding its audience base.

Take, for instance, the genealogy of The Barber of Seville. Originally a French drama from the “Figaro Trilogy” by Pierre-Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais, entitled The Barber of Seville or the Vain Precaution (1773), the play was later adapted into an opera by several composers. Chief among them include Giovanni Paisiello. As opera conductor and historian Burton D. Fisher notes, “The Barber of Seville story owes much of its provenance to the Renaissance commedia dell’arte, as well as to the great French comedy playwright, Molière, who was renowned for animating the absurd on the stage, particularly in his masterwork, Tartuffe.” Fisher additionally asserts that Rossini’s Barber of Seville “owes its provenance to Giovanni Paisiello’s widely acclaimed II Barbiere di Siviglia (1782).”

Intrinsically, The Rosina Project, as a traveling production, mirrors some of the features typically associated with commedia dell’arte. Here I am primarily remarking on the fact that commedia dell’arte usually takes place in public spaces such as the street or markets with limited scenery. It is also worthy to note that The Rosina Project’s roots in commedia dell’arte is also in tandem with the hip-hop elements of the production. Fisher writes, “Beaumarchais’s trilogy represented an Enlightenment manifesto; it was a caustic satire of French social and political conditions that ultimately reflect the growing dissatisfaction with the ruling class and nobility in the years preceding the French Revolution.” Take the character, Figaro, for example, whereas “he serves as the symbol of class revolt against the aristocracy.” Fisher’s assessment of the roots of commedia dell’arte coupled with the original iteration of The Barber of Seville mirrors the origins of hip-hop.

Scholar Daniel Banks contends that “Hip Hop is a dominant presence globally, especially among young people asserting their independence and desire for a return to community-based interactions and social justice.” Likewise, Samuel Craig Watkins recognizes hip hop as “a spectacular cultural movement committed to defying the cultural and political mainstream.” While the racialized histories typically associated with each genre and form, that is, both hip hop and commedia dell’arte (and opera for that matter), is complicated, they are both art forms that have transcended racial, gendered, sexual, and in some cases economic, boundaries. This is the underpinnings of The Rosina Project. As such, the hip-hopera joins a lengthy legacy of socially conscious art intended for the masses.