NYTimes.com: A Black Composer’s Intense Opera Gets a Rare Staging: William Grant Still’s one-act “Highway 1, U.S.A.” runs in St. Louis through June 17

 From left, Rehanna Thelwell, Nicole Cabell, Will Liverman and Christian Mark Gibbs rehearse for a rare production of William Grant Still’s “Highway 1, U.S.A.” at Opera Theater of St. Louis.

Credit...Eric Woolsey

The New York Times

By Seth Colter Walls

Published May 28, 2021 Updated May 29, 2021, 10:15 a.m. ET

The composer William Grant Still was a student of the renowned experimentalist Edgard Varèse, an arranger for the blues icon W.C. Handy and the creator of the enduringly winning “Afro-American Symphony.” Thanks to his rich catalog of symphonic and chamber music, Still, who died in 1978 at 83, was widely known as the pathbreaking “dean” of Black American composers.

But his operas have struggled to gain a foothold in the repertoire. “Troubled Island,” about the Haitian revolution and its aftermath, boasted a libretto by Langston Hughes and additional lyrics by Verna Arvey, a writer who was married to Still. It premiered at New York City Opera in 1949, but continues to wait for a second production. (A fascinating, if scratchy, recording of the premiere can be purchased from the Still estate.)

Credit...Carl Van Vechten Collection/Getty Images

Still’s one-act stunner “Highway 1, U.S.A.,” premiered in 1963, has also been a rarity. But it will enter the limelight this weekend with the opening of a new staging, directed by Ron Himes, at Opera Theater of St. Louis. (It runs there through June 17.)

In its two scenes — which together last under an hour — the filling-station owner Bob and his wife, Mary, deal with the ingratitude and arrogance of Bob’s younger brother, Nate, a spendthrift academic whose studies were underwritten by the couple. The plot — its lurid flights counterbalanced by the wholesome devotion of Bob and Mary — swiftly deals with complex, compelling ideas about familial expectation and duty.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K-zOdeSWTys

Conducted by Leonard Slatkin, a veteran advocate for American music, and featuring a cast of rising stars, the St. Louis production is an early highlight of opera’s fledgling return to live performance as the pandemic eases.