Alabama snake handlers focus of new Chicago opera
Updated Mar 01, 2021;
By Chris Jones Chicago Tribune (TNS) and Tribune Media Services I can tell you that when we see an art form like opera taking on a story like this, we get real worried – are we about.Posted by Chicago Opera Theater on Sunday, February 28, 2021
“God gets in the cracks” is the most common lyrical reprise in “Taking Up Serpents,” an intense, 70-minute contemporary chamber opera set among the Pentecostals of southern Alabama, here a community with a dangerous predilection for live snakes.
It’s a cleverly ambivalent resurgent phrase in Jerre Dye’s staccato libretto, worrying as it does over whether the deity’s slippery presence implies judgement or healing.