The Atlanta Opera’s 96-Hour Opera Festival is an annual, rigorous competition that challenges participants to conceive, compose, produce, and stage an opera in just four short days.
The 2023 winners, Selda Sahin and Dave Ragland, received the prize for their 10-minute opera that musicalizes the story of Carrie Steele Logan, a formerly enslaved woman who founded the oldest orphanage for Black children in the United States.
The 96-Hour Opera Festival prize funds a commission for a full-length opera based on the 10-minute version; that opera, now titled “Steele Roots,” premieres on June 20 at the Ray Charles Performing Arts Center of Morehouse College, with an encore performance on June 22. Librettist Selda Sahin and Atlanta Opera Director of Community Engagement and Education and Director of the 96-Hour Opera Festival, Jessica Kiger, united “City Lights” host Lois Reitzes to discuss this festival and the winning opera.
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