Plight of Long Island's migrant laborers inspires a contemporary opera

Jimmy Wilson never knew where his mother was buried. Oliver Burke never knew his mother at all. Frank Snyder didn't even know his real name, let alone his mother’s. 

Like countless other Black men and women born in the Jim Crow-era South, they found themselves north, specifically in Cutchogue, sorting, cleaning and bagging potatoes at the last of the farm labor camps that once dotted Long Island.

As they kept the North Fork’s once-thriving potato industry on life support into the 21st century, their connections to their pasts atrophied. Their lives more closely resembled those of sharecroppers from the time and place they had left, than those of their neighbors who strolled boutique-lined streets and drank at local wineries.

These hidden laborers had untold stories — sometimes obscured by time, trauma or both — that are inspiring the creative team developing a dramatized opera. The sung narrative, which remains a work in progress, shares a title with “All That Remains,” a 2024 hardbound retelling of news articles about these laborers that journalist Steve Wick wrote in the 2000s. A preview of the production is slated for July 19 at Sylvester Manor on Shelter Island as one of this year’s classical music events hosted by the Rites of Spring, a Southold-based nonprofit.

“One of the biggest [themes] is about restoring dignity to a people [for whom] not only was it not awarded, but it was taken,” Tanya Birl, the opera’s choreographer and director, said of the project. She and her creative partners — librettist, or opera wordsmith, Lee Bynum and composer Natalie Brown — decided the opera would be rooted in, but not rehash, local and national history.

“It has to be a universal human story of the importance of finding your dignity and also a search for who you are,” Birl, 42, of Manhattan, said. “It’s also about owning who you are and where you come from as something with pride and not shame or embarrassment.”

Piecing together their stories

Throughout his frequent visits, Wick learned how each of these laborers found their way during the 20th century to a labor camp he never knew existed, just a few blocks from his own Cutchogue home. Some were sent north by their families; some traveled with their families for work. Others were entirely alone and needed three meals a day.

There are no records of how many Southern-born Black men, women and children left a dark time and place in American history — one in which thousands of people who looked like them were lynched — and wound up working the Cutchogue barn built about a century ago, according to Wick’s “All That Remains.”

While audiences will not hear the stories of Burke, Snyder and Wilson, they will meet fictional characters forged from similar circumstances. Protagonist Daphne longs to leave the labor camp to which she returned after she had to leave college, according to Bynum’s current treatment. The head of the camp, Virgil, long abandoned his dreams as a young musician and activist to provide stability for himself and others. The arrival of Julian, who travels to labor camps and hopes to empower workers, sparks within some characters a desire to resolve past trauma.

Musically, “All That Remains” will sound much closer to 20th century America than what audiences might expect from an opera.

“You don’t have to think about the opera in terms of Italian, 19th century opera; it’s a modern opera,” said Paolo Bartolani, the founder and artistic and executive director of Rites of Spring. His nonprofit, which is raising funds for the opera's development, hosts classical music performances throughout the East End.

Audiences can expect jazz, blues, gospel and even Motown R&B-style pieces throughout the one-act opera, composer Brown said. Each character’s origin and current path will inform their dialogue and musical style. For younger characters like Julian, Brown will turn to genres considered “more progressive in that time.” When scoring for Virgil and other older characters, Brown said, she will rely on “more traditional stylings and also what we might more traditionally associate with musical theater or with opera.”

Interactive history lesson 

The host venue for the July preview, Sylvester Manor, founded in 1651, was a sugar plantation where enslaved Black people were forced to work for more than 150 years, according to the nonprofit that runs the manor. In addition to a truncated musical performance, the creative team behind the opera will discuss their production, Wick's source material and more relevant local history, including the former slave plantation.

“Being able to interact with the audience ... hear their thoughts and their responses and then build that into our future development process is so rare in musical theater and in opera,” Brown said. “I think it's a really exciting opportunity.” 

Beyond getting a glimpse of Black history “that hasn't been covered fully in the zeitgeist,” librettist Bynum believes that when the full opera is ready, audiences will leave with a positive message.

“There's a general feeling of hopefulness that I think people will be able to cling to,” Bynum said. “I think there can be a lot of hope even in moments of great ambiguity, or when we can't necessarily see what the resolution to something will be.”

The real-life subjects of Wick's book had a lingering fear that the camp would close as the local potato industry declined. That came true in 2006, when a fire burned down the barn, scattering those who remained.

Through his reporting, Wick, a former Newsday reporter and editor, helped Burke and Snyder — the latter of whom forgot and conflated memories and names following medical episodes — back to their mothers.

Wilson, who refused to ever return to his native Georgia, died three months after the fire. While reporting in Georgia, Wick tracked down the burial site of Wilson’s mother and honored his wish that it receive flowers.

“It’s tough being in journalism if you don’t meet people every once in a while who kind of bowl you over, and these people bowled me over,” Wick, 74, said. “I’m really grateful now that we’ll be able to tell their stories in a different way, in a different medium, but it’s still about them.”