What Lies Beneath

On Site Opera, New York’s pioneering opera company rooted in site-specific storytelling and the immersive experience, in partnership with the South Street Seaport Museum, brings opera aboard the deck of the historic tall ship Wavertree with What Lies Beneath, August 28-September 2, 2021. This immersive musical experience invites small groups to travel around the ship’s main deck to hear and see vignettes intended to connect audiences to the complex and tragic stories surrounding American maritime history, both through the enslavement of African people and through novelist Herman Melville’s tragic heroes. Combining song, story, history, and movement as the company returns to live performance, What Lies Beneath is a site-specific and immersive experience aboard Wavertree. Wavertree is designated on the National Register of Historic Places and represents the thousands of ships that docked along New York’s waterfront over the centuries. Built of riveted wrought iron in 1885, Wavertree is an archetype of the sailing ships of the latter half of the 19th century that, during the “age of sail,” lined South Street by the dozens, creating a forest of masts from the Battery to the Brooklyn Bridge. From the enticements used to lure Africans into enslavement to Captain Ahab’s final moments of moral reckoning aboard the whaling ship Pequod in Moby Dick, What Lies Beneath is a series of six unique vignettes featuring works from Amistad, by Anthony Davis & Thulani Davis, Ahab, a monodrama by Juliana Hall & Caitlin Vincent, 1619, a choral song cycle by Damien Geter, Billy Budd, by Benjamin Britten, E.M. Forester, & Eric Crozier, Sea Fever, by John Ireland & John Masefield and Riders to the Sea, by Ralph Vaughn Williams and John Millington Sygne. “Over the last 9 years, On Site Opera has brought iconic New York City spaces to life through opera while partnering with impactful institutions that bring their own elements of culture to our community,” explains General and Artistic Director, Eric Einhorn. “As New York welcomes back live audiences, we are looking forward to partnering with the South Street Seaport Museum and, together with our amazing cast and creative team, amplifying African American voices and stories through the exploration of our country’s tragic past.” "What excites me about this project is the care, humility and humanistic approach that is at the center of the design of the program. It is an opportunity to see the magic, regality, and resilience of a community of enslaved Africans through their eyes while experiencing the dissonance of the colonial, myopic view of who they were thought to be,” adds Winston Benons, Jr., the project’s Co-Director and Cultural Advocate. "All of us at the Seaport Museum are so pleased that On Site Opera has chosen to offer their latest site-specific performances on our very own ship Wavertree,” said Capt. Jonathan Boulware, President and CEO, South Street Seaport Museum. “What better way could there be to enhance our reopened ship than of an on site opera? This thoroughly unique experience, aligned with the Museum's mission, will delve into tough issues from our maritime histories. The Seaport Museum is proud to support these explorations." On the heels of their most recent project, The Road We Came, a 3-part walking tour through Black Music History, What Lies Beneath continues to use opera and music to explore themes of social justice, racial inequality and history’s continuing impact on the lens through which the world is experiencing today.