Anyone with an ear for opera tends to think in centuries rather than years, given the historical provenance of so many of the form’s classic works, but casual readers may not realize that even when developing and commissioning new operas, you have to play the long game. Case in point: Pretty Little Room, written by Memphian Robert Patterson of the Memphis Symphony Orchestra (MSO) and Mississippi native Jerre Dye, which Opera Memphis will premiere at Crosstown Theater this Friday, March 6th and Saturday, March 7th.
The work has been nearly a decade in the making. “It goes back to 2017 when we commissioned a short version of it,” says co-director Ned Canty of the opera’s evolution. “We then got to commission a full evening, then we had a libretto workshop, and a piano vocal workshop. Then, during Covid, we had the orchestra workshop. But when we hosted the Opera America Conference [in 2025], we could no longer get the dates that we needed to do this show, so we ended up remounting it. So now, I think there’s a huge sense of excitement among all the players and all of us at Opera Memphis that we’re finally getting to do it.”
Even five years ago, the heart of the drama was in place, and the story Canty limned out at the time was unforgettable. “The libretto is by Jerre Dye, and the music is by Robert Patterson, a Memphis-based composer and musician at the MSO, and it tells the story of Alice and Freda, two young women in the 1890s who went to school together, fell in love, and were going to run off together. Alice was going to live as a man and marry Freda. And their families found out, forbade them from seeing each other, and Freda’s family moved upriver. Alice became more depressed, and when she found out Freda was visiting family in Memphis, she went down to the cobblestone landing and slit Freda’s throat.
(above) Alice (Perri DiChristina) and Freda (Tina O’Malley) share a moment in the rose garden; (below) chums in love
“And there was a ‘trial of the century’ that went on for a year, in all the papers. It was a time before the word ‘lesbian’ even existed. And Alice was judged insane for believing that two women could live together as spouses, and was sent to the Bolivar asylum. Now the two of them are buried near each other in Elmwood Cemetery. It’s a story that actually happened, that still resonates today.”
Loaded with all the extremes of passion and tragedy, it’s a tale that cries out for an operatic treatment. At least that’s what Patterson, who plays horns in the MSO and is a resident composer with the Luna Nova Ensemble, thought when he first learned the history of Alice Mitchell and Freda Ward. It inspired him to pull out all the stops, this being his first full-length opera. “I do get the feeling that he’s putting everything he’s learned into this one piece,” says Canty. “What I hear is that contemporary classical approach, using strings, piano, and percussion, and also including harpsichord, and in the arias and choral writing, there are some amazing sections. Some of the most powerful sections are where the chorus is the other patients at the asylum. I also hear the work of somebody who has been playing in an opera orchestra pit for decades, so has been a part of creating 300 years’ worth of operatic pieces.”
Co-directing the production with Canty is Dr. Joy Brooke Fairfield, associate professor and chair of media studies at Rhodes College, with a background in LGBTQ theater and performance art. In this story, she saw a chance to evoke nascent issues of non-binary identity before American culture even had the language for such issues. “In this particular era, right before the 1900s, the word ‘homosexual’ had not been invented, basically. The term lesbian wasn’t being used. There was really no framework for thinking through same-sex relationships and we were in the middle of this, like, separate spheres ideology, which was a very strict segregation of what women and men did. And so in that time, there was this practice of girls kind of pretending to date each other. And it was called ‘chumming.’”
Yet young women who took chumming “too far” faced stigmatization. Which brings us to that still looming, now abandoned building complex that haunts Bolivar, Tennessee, the Western State Mental Hospital. “One thing I learned through the research of this project was just how much bourgeois or middle class men sent their wives and daughters to the asylum when they were sick of dealing with them,” says Fairfield. “And I think that’s perhaps been erased a little bit in the conscious memory about how much this entity of the asylum was used to manage any kind of mental health issues, probably a lot of different kinds of neurodiversity.”
Meanwhile, Fairfield thinks they’ve found the perfect team to express this darkly romantic milieu. The New York Times, for instance, calls conductor Micah Gleason, winner of last year’s American Prize in Conducting, an “easygoing yet fiercely skilled conductor and singer.” And, Fairfield adds, “The opera is cast so well. We’re really working with some really amazing singers who were able to help bring out parts of the story through their own performance, that really add to it. There’s one aria about how men hoard all the words, that the men have all the words — ‘the lion’s share.’ Our current cast and our Alice are doing such a great job of trying to claim words. I love how Ned describes the way opera works specifically on the emotions and bypasses some of the intellect. In performance art, we also talk about bypassing the intellect. The goal is to work on the nervous system, even if it’s shocking or gets people distressed. And you know, I think maybe we have a little bit of that in here too, hopefully.”