In celebration of the opening of the new exhibit, The 19th Amendment: How Women Won the Vote, the National Constitution Center hosts the premiere performance of composer Patrice Michaels’ new work RESOLVED and a Town Hall discussion about the women who fought for equal voting rights. Join internationally-renowned mezzo-soprano J’Nai Bridges and pianist Laura Ward for an 18-minute song cycle about the 19th Amendment and the American women’s suffrage movement by composer/soprano/creator Patrice Michaels and produced by NBCUniversal. A panel discussion featuring historians, including Marcia Chatelain of Georgetown University and Gail Heriot of the University of San Diego School of Law, and National Constitution Center Exhibit Developer Elena Popchock exploring some of the iconic women highlighted in the performance who fought for the 19th Amendment and the Equal Rights Amendment will follow. Jeffrey Rosen, president and CEO of the National Constitution Center, moderates.
This program is presented in partnership with Vision 2020’s Women 100 and as part of the Center’s yearlong initiative, Women and the Constitution, celebrating the 100th anniversary of the 19th Amendment.
Performance Participants
- J’Nai Bridges, known for her “plush-voiced mezzo-soprano” (The New York Times), has been heralded as “a rising star” (Los Angeles Times), gracing the world’s top stages. Her 2019-2020 operatic engagements in the U.S. this season include her debut at The Metropolitan Opera, singing the role of Nefertiti in Philip Glass’ opera Akhnaten, and her house and role debut at Washington National Opera performing Dalila in Samson et Dalila. Bridges will sing the title role of Carmen for the first time in Europe at the Dutch National Opera and will make her debut with the Festival d’Aix-en-provence singing Margret in a new production of Wozzeck, conducted by Sir Simon Rattle. Bridges opens her season with her Tanglewood Festival debut, performing Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony with the Boston Symphony Orchestra. She continues her concert repertoire by making her debut with San Antonio Symphony in Mahler’s Symphony No. 2, and debuting with the New Jersey Symphony in Handel’s Messiah, and closes her season by making her debut at the BBC Proms at the Royal Albert Hall in Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony with Chineke! Orchestra and Friends.
- Patrice Michaels is a composer, creator, and soprano. Her singing has been featured on more than 25 albums on Decca, Neos, Albany and Amadis labels, plus 14 releases for Cedille Records. Her compositional interests center around works with words, including incidental music for Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, a one-act opera on Euripides’ The Trojan Women, the children’s show A Song for Harmonica, and several song cycles, most recently THE LONG VIEW: A Portrait of Ruth Bader Ginsburg in Nine Songs. Formerly Professor of Voice and Opera in the Conservatory of Music at Lawrence University in Appleton, Wisconsin, she currently serves as Director of Vocal Studies at The University of Chicago and as Lecturer in the Voice & Opera program at the Bienen School of Music at Northwestern University.
- Laura Ward is pianist and Artistic Director of Lyric Fest. As a distinguished collaborative pianist she is known for both her technical ability and vast knowledge of repertoire and styles. Concert engagements have taken her to Carnegie Hall, The Kennedy Center, Boston’s Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Teatro Colon, the Spoleto Festival (Italy), the Colmar International Music Festival and Saint Denis Festival in France. She has served on the faculty of AlpenKammermusik, The CoOPERAtive Program at Westminster Choir College, The Academy of Vocal Arts, Temple University, Ravinia Festival Stean’s Institute, Washington Opera, University of Maryland, Music Academy of the West and as the official pianist for the Washington International Competition, the Astral Artists Auditions and for the Marian Anderson Award.
Town Hall Participants
- Marcia Chatelain is a professor of history and African American studies at Georgetown University. The author of South Side Girls: Growing Up in the Great Migration, Chatelain is a scholar of African American life and culture. Her most recent book is Franchise: The Golden Arches in Black America. She has contributed to TheAtlantic.com, Time.com, Ms. Magazine, and the Chronicle of Higher Education, which also named her a "Top Influencer in Higher Education" in 2016. She has appeared on local and national television outlets including C-Span, MSNBC, CNN, BBC America, and PBS. She is also former host of the Slate podcast, “ The Waves,” a bi-weekly show that covers feminism, gender, and popular culture.
- Gail Heriot is a professor of law at the University of San Diego (USD) School of Law. Prior to entering academia, she practiced with Mayer, Brown & Platt in Chicago and Hogan & Hartson in Washington, D.C. She also served as civil rights counsel to the U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary and as associate dean and professor of law at the George Mason University School of Law. She joined the USD School of Law faculty in 1989. Heriot co-wrote the National Constitution Center's Interactive Constitution explainer on the 19th Amendment.
- Elena Popchock is the exhibition developer at the National Constitution Center, overseeing exhibit content from conception through installation. Since 2016, she has served as the lead developer for several exhibits, including Hamilton: The Constitutional Clashes That Shaped a Nation, the permanent exhibit Civil War and Reconstruction: The Battle for Freedom and Equality, and most recently, The 19th Amendment: How Women Won the Vote.
- Jeffrey Rosen is the president and CEO of the National Constitution Center, a nonpartisan nonprofit organization devoted to educating the public about the U.S. Constitution. Rosen is also professor of law at The George Washington University Law School and a contributing editor of The Atlantic.
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