By Janelle Gelfand
The Cincinnati Enquirer

Opera fans will get a peek at the Cincinnati Opera's 2005 production of Margaret Garner at an Opera Rap tonight in Memorial Hall.

IF YOU GO

What: Opera Rap: "The Music, Story and Significance of Margaret Garner," with Richard Danielpour, composer, and Carl B. Westmoreland, senior adviser, National Underground Railroad Freedom Center When: 7 p.m. (sold out) and 9 p.m. today Where: Memorial Hall, 1225 Elm St., Over-the-Rhine Admission: Free; tickets required. 241-2742 or www.cincinnatiopera.org

The piece is based on the harrowing true story of a Kentucky slave who killed her child rather than see her returned to slavery.

Denyce Graves will star in the title role. The opera, which will have its world premiere in Detroit, is a co-commission of the Cincinnati Opera with Michigan Opera Theatre and Opera Company of Philadelphia. It will be presented here in July 2005 in honor of the opening of the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center.

Grammy-winning composer Richard Danielpour, who will speak at the Rap, talked to us about the piece and his work with Nobel Prize-winning novelist Toni Morrison, who is writing the libretto.

How much of the two-act opera is finished?

What does "finished" mean, you know? (laughs)

All the notes are on paper, so in that sense it's finished. I'm making a final score of Act II.

What is it like to work with Toni Morrison (who told Garner's story in the novel "Beloved")?

I think it's nothing short of miraculous that at the age of 71, she wrote her first libretto.

She managed to find a perfect balance between clarity of intention and a leanness, which every libretto needs.

How do you work together?

She has written everything, given it to me, and I've made lots of alterations with her permission.

The most important thing that Toni and I did was to spend an enormous amount of preplanning time before the libretto or music were written.

We met continuously for a year, just about how these eight scenes were going to look.

What have you learned as you have been writing?

I'm learning that the opera is a continual crisscross of paradoxes. You have a free man - but as the opera progresses, he becomes more of a slave. And you have a woman who is a slave, who, in a sense, realizes her own inner freedom.

It's fascinating to me that the music for the black Americans is the most rhythmically free. But for the white singers, who are free, their music is more boxed-in.

Was that a conscious decision on your part?

For me, composing is sort of like being in a waking dream. So it's conscious on one level, and unconscious on another.

Why did you feel this was the right time in your life to compose an opera?

I feel like I've been preparing for this for 24 years. ... I've almost felt like I was an opera composer in disguise.

When I was writing my concertos and my symphonic works, I always needed a secret dramatic scenario.

What's the biggest joy about this project?

I get to wake up every day and have another day with it. The writing of it is phenomenally invigorating and inspiring.

I feel as if I'm being used to do something that's a lot bigger than any of us.

E-mail jgelfand@enquirer.com