When George Lam lived in Durham, he found something about the Liggett and Myers tobacco warehouses haunting. Many had just been converted into trendy loft apartments, but billboards and remnants of the original factory were very much present.
"That really intrigued me and got me into learning a lot more about Durham's tobacco past," he said.
Lam, a composer, interviewed more than a dozen people connected to the warehouses, from factory workers to the architects and urban planners who gutted the structures. He sent his findings to playwright John Justice, who wrote the libretto for what may be the first tobacco opera.
"The Persistence of Smoke" is Lam's doctoral thesis. He is close to earning a doctorate in music at Duke University and has returned from Boston to debut the opera in the city that inspired it.
The story examines the two lives those warehouses have had and centers on a young architect named Kevin and his estranged father, Curtis, an old tobacco worker who deliriously recalls the glory days of leaf. Kevin has plans for the old buildings, but it is not so easy to simply ignore the history of tobacco - the money and the illness it brought, the lives it shaped.
Lam's opera examines themes he thinks many small cities face these days: the death of an industry, gentrification and the development - and then redevelopment - of urban centers.
"What does that mean" for cities like Durham? Lam asked. "How can an opera shed light on that issue? Not a lot of theater or music has dealt with this."
His opera will debut in a building that has undergone transformation from textile mill to mixed-use restoration: Golden Belt in downtown Durham, where the muslin pouches for loose tobacco and paper cartons for cigarettes were once manufactured.
The words "tobacco" and "opera" might seem about as awkward a pairing as any, and Lam admits his modern-day opera is probably not what people think of when imagining a libretto paired with music.
"It's different than Mozart," he said. "For sure." There will be a 10-piece orchestra, including a banjo.
But it meets the definition of an opera, starting with its cast of opera professionals.
Sandra Cotton, a Duke professor, plays the mezzo-soprano part of Kevin's wife, Skylar. She has lived alongside the revamped tobacco warehouses for years, making this opera a bit special.
"It's more documentary-like," she said.
Some of the lyrics are quite descriptive of tobacco's heyday, especially when sung by the father figure, Curtis, played by baritone David Weigel:
The machines roared
and the Golden Leaf poured
into packs and cartons
in this room where the machines roared.
Kevin, played by baritone Scott MacLeod, counters with equal force:
When the old man spoke
through the hole in his throat
croaking voice through a metal box ...
The opera is directed by Jay O'Berski of the Little Green Pig Theatrical Concern. He also teaches at Duke. A Detroit transplant, he doesn't lay claim to Durham like a native, but the specter of tobacco has not been lost on him.
"I still remember when it rained in Durham it smelled like the bottom of your mother's purse - like scattered tobacco," he said.
For him, Lam's opera has classic undertones and "plays out like a Greek tragedy."
"Rising from the ashes of a cancerous blight, a lot of people are caught in the crossfire, and this family is one of them," O'Berski said.
Ultimately, the audience will have to decide how to feel about Durham's tobacco history.
Lam's feelings are not so black and white.
"There's definitely a sense of encouraging someone to maintain different perspectives," he said. "That to understand a place and its history, and one that has such a complicated history as Durham, it is necessary to think about tobacco not only as the cancer-causing product that we are all trying to forget about, but also as the product that provided a steady, good living for an entire population."
