Marjorie Kinnan Rawling’s only children’s book, The Secret River, was published posthumously in 1955. The book (and the opera) tells the story of Calpurnia, who will be sung by Sabrina Langlois in the upcoming production. Calpurnia is a bright young girl who ventures into the wilderness to find a fish-laden secret river. The venue will be Mead Botanical Garden’s Grove Amphitheater. | Courtesy Opera Orlando
When your show is steeped in the natural beauty of Old Florida, it makes sense to stage it in a location that provides a similar backwoods ambiance. Hence Opera Orlando’s revival of The Secret River.
Originally performed in 2021 in the Alexis & Jim Pugh Theater at Dr. Phillips Center as the company’s first commissioned opera, the sung-through fantasy will be remounted in the pastoral environs of Mead Botanical Garden at its amphitheater, The Grove.
The Secret River is based on a little-known 1955 children’s book by Pulitzer Prize-winning author Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, who remains best remembered for her more adult-minded Sunshine State-based narratives such as The Yearling and Cross Creek. Performances are slated for Friday and Saturday, March 6 and 7, at 7:30 p.m.
In The Secret River, a young Black girl named Calpurnia seeks to solve her family’s Depression-era woes. A benevolent old soul named Mother Albirtha directs her toward a mystical wellspring that’s supposedly overflowing with enough fish to feed her entire impoverished community.
But, as is so often the case in classic children’s literature, the path to salvation isn’t without its lessons and challenges.
“The story is set in the backwoods of Central Florida, so we thought it would be fun to present it in a natural environment,” says Gabriel Preisser, general director of Opera Orlando.
Among the most intriguing elements of the opera, as attendees of the previous production learned, are the elaborate animal puppets crafted by MicheLee Puppets. With an outdoor setting, the native creatures will be able to enter through the audience—who will be seated on blankets and in folding chairs that front the stage.
Opera Orlando’s charming adaptation features music by Stella Sung, a Gainesville-bred, nationally acclaimed composer who’s also a professor of music at the University of Central Florida. The libretto is by Mark Campbell, winner of the 2012 Pulitzer Prize for Music for Silent Night, his operatic interpretation of a Christmastime lull in the hostilities of World War I. (A production of that work was a marquee offering during the opera’s 2025–26 season.)
Bethune-Cookman University professor Karl Van Richards conducts the upcoming performances. The stage director is Ayòfémi Jeriah Demps, while the choreography is by Maxine Montilus. In the cast are Kimberly Hernández as Mother Albirtha, Sabrina Langlois as Calpurnia and Renée Richardson as Calpurnia’s mother, Cassandra.
Amy Cofield, last seen locally in the opera’s 2020 production of Girl of the Golden West, plays Rawlings herself—a framing technique that shows her struggling with the writing of The Secret River (which was ultimately published only after her death, and went on to earn the John Newbery Medal in 1956).
The encore production—which will again include the Opera Orlando Youth Company and performers from the Inez Patricia School of Dance—will be dedicated to Tracey Conner, founder of MicheLee Puppets, who died in 2023; and Dennis Whitehead-Darling, stage director of the 2021 debut, who died in a motorcycle accident last year.
But sometimes, looking back points the way forward: The Secret River represents a still too-rare opportunity for a Black cast to be front and center in an opera. That fact might have gotten a smile from Rawlings, who became racially progressive (for the era, at least) in part thanks to her friendship with folklorist Zora Neale Hurston.
Notes Preisser: “We know how empowering and inspiring it can be for young people—truly people of any age—to see themselves represented on stage and truly feel connected to the story and to a character’s journey. The Secret River does just that.”
Mead Botanical Garden is located at 1300 South Denning Drive, Winter Park. For more information, call or visit the website.
