Damien Geter, composer-in-residence at the Richmond Symphony, has been named music director of Oregon’s Portland Opera.
Geter had been serving as the company’s artistic advisor and interim music director.
A 45-year-old native of Chesterfield County in Richmond’s suburbs, now based in Chicago, Geter is a bass-baritone who has performed with the Metropolitan Opera and Chicago Opera Theater, as well as orchestras and other ensembles. As an actor, he has played roles in a number of stage and television productions.
“Loving v. Virginia,” Geter’s and librettist Jessica Murphy Moo’s opera on the lives of Mildred and Richard Loving, who defied Virginia’s ban on interracial marriage, leading to the 1967 US Supreme Court ruling outlawing such laws, was premiered by Virginia Opera earlier this year.
Geter’s earlier operas, “American Apollo” and “Delta King’s Blues,” as well as orchestral, chamber and vocal works, also address historical and current aspects of the Black American life and art.
In its coming season, the Richmond Symphony will stage the premiere of an orchestral suite from “Loving v. Virginia” and Geter’s “An African American Requiem” (2019), a setting of the Latin Requiem Mass that incorporates Negro spirituals and declarations against violence toward Blacks.
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