“Virginia Opera, along with the Richmond Symphony, announced Monday that it has co-commissioned ‘Loving v. Virginia,’ an operatic retelling of the groundbreaking U.S. Supreme Court case centered on the interracial marriage of Mildred and Richard Loving,” writes Bill Lohmann in Monday’s (5/16) Richmond Times-Dispatch (VA). Composer Damien Geter and librettist Jessica Murphy Moo’s opera “will be premiered in venues across Virginia in 2025…. ‘This is a story that is very important, not only to Virginia but important to our nation and quite frankly to the world,’ said Geter. [Murphy Moo] said the Lovings made her own marriage possible and she happily noted her oldest daughter was born on June 12, so-called Loving Day, the anniversary of the 1967 U.S. Supreme Court decision Loving v. Virginia that struck down all anti-miscegenation laws remaining in the nation…. The [1967] Supreme Court [decision] served as a basis for the court’s 2015 ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges, in which it ruled the fundamental right to marry is guaranteed to same-sex couples. Virginia Opera’s [artistic director Adam] Turner said that ruling made his marriage to his husband two years ago possible. ‘It’s a testament to Loving v. Virginia,’ he said.”
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