December 18, 2023

By A.A. Christi

Starting in 1910, many immigrants who journeyed to America were processed at an immigration station on Angel Island, located in the middle of San Francisco Bay. Until a fire led to its closure in 1940, the station primarily functioned as a detention center, where half a million people from 80 countries were held under barbaric conditions—some for weeks, others for years. The majority of these detainees were Chinese migrants, who were banned from entering the United States under the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, with few exceptions.

Making his BAM debut, acclaimed Chinese-American composer Huang Ruo revisits this chapter of American history in Angel Island - for Voices and String Quartet, a poignant multimedia experience that blurs the boundaries of opera and theater. In collaboration with the Del Sol Quartet, the Choir of Trinity Wall Street, and archival filmmaker Bill Morrison, Huang Ruo and director Matthew Ozawa weave a powerful requiem from the century-old poetry engraved on the detention center's walls by some of the hundreds of thousands of Chinese immigrants who were incarcerated and subjected to dehumanizing horrors. This production is a stirring plea for care and empathy as well as a visceral, clear-eyed tribute to the rebellion and resilience of those who passed through and perished at Angel Island.

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