Grammy Award-winning tenor Freddie Ballentine and (equally accolade-laden) Indian-American pianist Kunal Lahiry premiered their recital Our People, a celebration of LGBTQ and Black artists and histories, at Washington, D.C.’s Kennedy Center in December 2021. It’s a production that Ballentine, who is Black, says was a response to the Black Lives Matter movement following the death of George Floyd. “It was something that represented the times, and represented us, and represented as many queer and Black people as we could imagine in one setting,” Ballentine says.

Things have changed and things haven’t changed since that 2021 debut. For one, Ballentine and Lahiry, who both grew up in the US, now live in Berlin, which is home to a “gorgeous” music scene, three great opera houses, and parties Ballentine says feature “everything that my wild little heart desires.” 

The Kennedy Center, meanwhile, is a hyperpoliticized version of the institution it once was following President Donald Trump’s purge of and ensuing self-appointment to the Center’s board, placing an executive director of allegedly “unhinged” nature at its helm. All of that against the backdrop of continuously worsening political and social conditions for many Black people, queer and trans people, immigrants, and others, who historically and presently confront fascism’s entrenchment.

Our People comes to Seattle Opera’s Tagney Jones Hall on Sunday, April 27, marking its first return to the US since 2021. And, like the political conditions to which the performance is a response, parts of the recital have changed while maintaining its core qualities. 

The recital is centered around four core pillars, tracking—the way I see it—the life cycle of many political movements. The first chapter, “Shut me out (Isolation),” highlights otherness and exclusion. Starting with the traditional spiritual “Sometimes I feel like a motherless child,” Ballentine and Lahiry also perform pieces by composer Aaron Copland (who, using present-day terms, was arguably “closeted”), as well as Black composer Margaret Bonds, whose music, Ballentine says, sometimes touches on exclusion. 

“Going up in smoke (Damnation)” looks at the AIDS crisis and at oppression as vectors of death and damnation. This section includes “The ’80s Miracle Diet” by David Krakauer and the well-known anti-lynching piece “Strange Fruit” by Abel Meeropol (recorded by Billie Holiday in 1939). Ballentine and Lahiry see the mpox epidemic as one example among many of these forms of oppression continuing today. “I got monkeypox back when [it] was going around, and I have never felt so alone,” says Ballentine. “It was shocking how quickly the government in Germany just locked us all down saying, You can't leave your houses. I never felt so close to death. If it wasn't for my really great Ukrainian refugee roommate at the time, who had a smallpox vaccine so he was protected, I don't know how I would have pulled through on that."

They follow this up with “Requiem (Remembrance),” where the performers “pay homage to those in the first and second sections” using pieces like “The Man I Love” by Earl Wild and “Dido’s Lament (When I am laid in earth)” from Henry Purcell’s opera Dido and Aeneas. 

The final chapter, “So Loud, So Proud (Revolution),” includes songs like “My People” by Ricky Ian Gordon (lyrics by Langston Hughes),” Backlash Blues” by Nina Simone, and “Mr. Brown,” a piece written by Zach Redler for Ballentine and Lahiry, which honors Ballentine’s “proud, loud, and audacious” childhood chorus teacher. 

If the repertoire sounds heavy, that’s because it often is. At its Kennedy Center debut, the concert was “longer” and “sadder,” according to Ballentine, in part because of the social movements and specific injustices to which Our People was responding. The performers have truncated the sets and introduced breaks, but say “it’s almost heavier singing it now.” In addition to redoubled authoritarianism in the US, Ballentine mentioned political conditions in Germany, where four people who protested against the genocide in Gaza are potentially facing deportation. Ballentine and Lahiry also don’t know if the Kennedy Center would allow them to perform the repertoire today. 

But the recital travels on more than one wavelength. That heaviness is a means toward awareness and coalescing around shared ideas for what the human experience should look like, and offers space for levity and creativity in the process. Lahiry, for his part, just performed at the Kennedy Center, making a point to get make-up done by a drag queen before going on stage. “It is a revolution at this point in time, and that is because we as a queer community are a revolution. We are always fighting to be heard and fighting to let our natural joy and uniqueness take precedent and not be pushed down by society,” Ballentine says. 

The performers said they want to see people of all stripes at the performance, noting that parts of the recital focused on AIDS remembrance have been especially poignant for older members of the audience. At the same time, seeing the girls and the queens show up matters to the artists. (Heaviness and levity going hand in hand.) “I want the queens there. We did this for us. When we did it in Berlin, I felt so happy because Kunal and I took a peek out into the audience … and all of the people there were just our friends and loved ones from Berlin,” Ballentine says. “It was all the girls from the parties, like, they were all there ready to sit through their first fucking recital.”

Seattleites have—at least relatively speaking—a decent number of opera performances focused on social-justice issues and Black and queer culture they can attend. Last year saw drag queen Anita Spritzer perform a recital; McCaw Hall, meanwhile, was home to X: The Life and Times of Malcolm X. Seattle Opera also just announced its first full production of a queer-focused opera in February 2026. Our People is in line with that repertory trend.

“I am a strong believer that artists have the obligation to be a reflection of the times and to protest whenever possible, and I think that this is a really solid way for me to use a platform and to protest,” Ballentine says. “I'm happy to sing this recital. I think it's a gorgeous collection of pieces. I think it tells a really powerful story. I think it still tells a very relevant story to what we're going through today.”