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By Victoria Bourne

More than half a century ago, a couple from a small town in Virginia sparked a historic change.

Richard and Mildred Loving, a white man and Black woman from Caroline County, are the namesake of the seminal 1967 “Loving v. Virginia” U.S. Supreme Court case that ushered in a new era of marital equality when the judges ruled that state laws banning interracial marriage were unconstitutional.

Later this month, and the landmark case they inspired premieres at the Harrison Opera House in Norfolk, brought to life through the music of a native Virginian composer and �鶹��ý alumnus: Damien Geter ’02.

Geter, who graduated from the College of Arts & Letters with a bachelor’s in music education, is a triple threat in the opera world: a composer, conductor and lauded bass-baritone singer. “Loving v. Virginia,” which was commissioned by Virginia Opera and Richmond Symphony, is Geter’s fourth opera. His other works include compositions for chamber, orchestra and vocal ensemble.

Geter said the Lovings’ journey — from their budding romance to their legal peril as an interracial couple in the South to their civil rights triumph — is well-suited to an operatic interpretation.

"The thing about opera is there is generally always something that pulls at your heart.  There's always a moment in the story that keeps you at the edge of your seat. And the music propels that emotion,” said Geter. “I feel like this is a great story for the operatic stage because there's so much at stake.”

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A Rural Upbringing

Geter grew up in Chesterfield County, near Petersburg, Virginia. He’s based in Chicago now, but when he thinks of his family home, southern heat, sweet tea, cornbread, collard greens and floral decor come to mind.

"I'm from Virginia. It's still very much in me,” he said.

In February, he was a Library of Virginia and Dominion Energy program that recognizes African American leaders and their contributions to the commonwealth.

Geter said the soundtrack of his childhood was full of music. His late mother was a very good singer.

“She could sing anything, but she mostly sang alto,” he said.

He learned harmony by listening to her sing along to tunes on the car radio. And his father had an enviable record collection through which Geter was exposed to a variety of genres, including soul, gospel and rock.

The first piece of classical music he recalls hearing, Beethoven's Symphony No. 6, was from his father's Time Life Magazine record collection.

“I was so intrigued by the covers of those things,” he said. “I can still see them.”

Geter's grandmother, who lived with the family, played piano and organ.

"She was my first accompanist," Geter said. "I remember going with her to her senior citizens hangout spot — they called it ‘the Center.’ She played the piano, and I sang, ‘This Little Light of Mine.’ I get a little choked up thinking about it now -— that was my first time singing in public."

He couldn't have been older than 7, he said. His grandmother taught him how to emote, he added, “and what it means to actually feel what you sing.”

"I'm the product of every music that has come across my ears and influenced by all of those things, even today," he said. “I always say that my grandma and my mom were my first music teachers.”

Becoming a Monarch

When it was time to pursue college, Geter applied to only one school: �鶹��ý. He did it without knowing anything about the music department.

"I remember going to visit �鶹��ý and I thought, 'Oh, I could go here because the buildings look new,’ and I liked that. It felt modern,” he said. “I came from the country and to me it felt very much like a city."

He played trumpet then, mostly classical but also some jazz. He’d never taken vocal lessons but was encouraged by Dr. Jo Ann Sims to pursue them after his performance of "America the Beautiful" on the first day of her voice class. She told him he had a gift, he recalled.

"From there, I just kept studying. I never really took it too seriously, I just did it for fun, mostly,” he said. “I had a great teacher, Dr. Frank Ward — he is also a Black man. So, we got to talk about things outside of music and also things related to the industry, being Black and trying to navigate that side of the world as well.”

At �鶹��ý, Geter said he found mentors who believed in him even when he didn't believe in himself. “People who pushed me and gave me skills that I didn't know I was honing until I got in the 'real world,' which allowed me to do the thing that I'm doing now."

Geter insists becoming a composer wasn’t on his radar at first.

“I don't know how I got here because I wanted to be a conductor," said Geter, who has a master’s in conducting from Indiana State University in Terre Haute. "The composing thing is sort of a bonus."

The Sound of Change

 In 2016, a changing political climate inspired Geter to compose. "I wanted to do something more than just sing 'La Boheme.' I wanted to contribute something that was a little more charged. I wrote ‘An African American Requiem,’ and from there things kind of took off."

The 20-movement work, modeled after Verdi’s 1874 “Requiem,” is based on the traditional Latin requiem liturgy. It infuses spirituals with modern declarations of racial violence against African Americans and incorporates a speech on lynching by early-20th-century Black journalist and suffragist Ida B. Wells.

“Geter’s ease working on a grand scale is one way he remains faithful to his inspiration,” wrote Washington Post music critic Michael Andor Brodeur after the piece’s East Coast premiere in May 2022 at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C.

“Geter takes full advantage of the wide-open emotional space offered by the form, offering completely different pathways through mourning, and making the ‘Requiem’ very much his own creation,” Andor Brodeur added.

When asked what defines his sound as a composer, Geter demurred. "I've been asked that before, and I don't know how to answer it because I live with it. It's so ingrained in me that it just feels like a natural thing, whatever the thing is."

"Geter … writes beautifully for voices and elegantly for orchestra,” wrote The New Yorker’s Alex Ross in July 2024 when the Des Moines Metro Opera performed Geter’s “American Apollo.”

A work of historical fiction, he composed it alongside librettist Lila Palmer about Thomas Eugene McKeller, a Black hotel worker who served as model and muse for portraitist John Singer Sargent.

What Geter can say is his style is evolving.

"I pull a lot from jazz, especially in terms of tonalities and modal writing,” he said. “My music is very polyphonic. I don't know if that comes from a call and response type of influence that I got from the church, or it could be an influence of Bach, because I love Bach."

His music tends to be very rhythmic, he said, and there are certain instruments he gravitates to — the low tones of a bass clarinet, for example.

"Everything has a different color," he said. "I try to use all the tools in the toolbox so that I don't become a one note — pun intended — composer. I'm always experimenting with different colors and trying to figure out different combinations of instruments and the sounds that they can make together and also on their own."

Now he finds himself experimenting and challenging notions of tonality.

But every new composition starts the same, he said. "I sit down, and I look at that blank paper and I go, ‘I have no idea what the hell I'm doing. Why are they asking me to do this? I can't do this.' And I promise you that happens every single time."

"But at the end, it always ends up OK."

The Lovings’ Operatic Turn  

In May 2022, Virginia Opera and the Richmond Symphony announced they had commissioned Geter and librettist Jessica Murphy Moo

“Honestly, this is one of my favorite things I’ve written so far,” Geter said.

Home is the opera's overarching theme. The Lovings, who married in Washington, D.C., in 1958, were banished from their Virginia home and lived in exile for a time.

“I feel like this is a great story for the operatic stage because there's so much at stake.” - Damien Geter

He’s particularly excited for his family to see the performance, which travels from Norfolk to Northern Virginia and Richmond in early May. He’s also looking forward to people experiencing the Lovings’ story in a new way, perhaps even for the first time.

As a composer, Geter said it’s not his job to dictate how an audience feels about the work he creates — people will take away from the music what they will. But what stands out for him in “Loving v. Virginia” is the power of individuals to bring about change. Powerlessness as a single voice is a false notion, he said.

“If you look at these two folks, Richard and Mildred, I'm sure they probably thought the same thing,” Geter said. “These are everyday people who we could have known very easily and look at what they accomplished."

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