Sellars and Adams have made a particular effort in this collaboration to highlight the international, multi-ethnic, and multicultural experience of the Gold Rush, a reality which is sadly overlooked in historical records (and modern pop culture views) of that period. As Sellars put it, “if she had lived at the same time as Andy Warhol, she would have hung out with that crowd.” She was famous for her “Spider Dance,” which is reimagined with choreography by John Heginbotham in the July 4 scene in Act 2, with Adams saying at the preview, “this is my seven veils dance.” Lola was a celebrity and entertainer with a colorful life filled with travel, cutting-edge art, and scandalous love affairs. She has a love interest, and eventually an ally, in the character of Joe Cannon, a miner. Her text is comprised entirely of Chinese poetry (translated to English) from the walls of the detention center at Angel Island where Chinese immigrants were held, interrogated, and processed before being allowed to enter the US. She sings in both English and Spanish the text of the love song Bridges performed at the preview was from the poetry of Alfonsina Storni, an Argentine poetess.Īh Sing is a Chinese-American sex slave who dreams of buying her freedom and eventually her own farm. In the opera, she is capable, hardworking, and loving, and works at the Empire Hotel bar alongside Ramòn, her secret boyfriend. Not much is known about Mexican-American immigrant Josefa Segovia many contemporary references are third-hand from newspaper accounts of her death. Adams concluded his description of her with a shrug and laugh, saying, “I’m in love with this woman.Ģ.
The story and text of the opera come from multiple primary sources, and draw heavily from a series of 23 letters Dame Shirley (a pseudonym her real name was Louise Clappe) wrote to her sister while living in Downieville, aptly titled “The Shirley Letters.” Originally from the East coast, she was a well-educated woman and expressive writer, and, in Adams’ words at the preview, “was not impressed by these blowhards” after living among the miners.