Kia Caldwell
Audio By Carbonatix
To the uninitiated, the world of opera and classical music is one populated with centuries old stories told in Italian or French that’s limited to older, stuffier audiences. It doesn’t always call to mind Black, queer or even American stories.
Karen Slack, a Grammy-winning soprano and star vocalist of Drag, an upcoming premiere orchestral performance at the Dallas Symphony Orchestra, wants to challenge those preconceptions.
“Of course, I feel like the classical medium through the orchestra is the grandest of all art forms,” Slack tells the Observer. “You can tell any story through classical music, particularly American stories… I am a Black, American classical musician. I am charged to tell all stories and this is the medium that I chose.”
Drag is inspired by the life of Gladys Bentley, who was a Black, lesbian singer, pianist and drag king during the 1920s. After running away to New York at the age of 16, Bentley joined the legendary Harlem Renaissance arts scene and became known for sporting her signature tuxedo and top hat while performing raunchy parodies of popular songs alongside a chorus of drag queens. Later in life, she started wearing women’s clothes, married a man and claimed to be “cured” of homosexuality in a controversial essay for Ebony entitled “I Am a Woman Again.”
To Slack, Bentley’s life story is nothing short of operatic.
“I was fascinated by this woman who chose to live out loud in a time where Black women and queer people were not,” she says. “I thought her life should be told on the stage.”
Slack first became enthralled by Bentley during the 2020 COVID-19 lockdown, during which she spent reading and researching topics that interested her.
“I came across a video about the unsung Black women in arts and entertainment and Gladys Bentley, who I did not know, came up,” she says. “I thought she had an extraordinary story. She was a native Philadelphian, like myself. She was the first drag king of the Harlem Renaissance and one of the first millionaires of the Harlem Renaissance.”
Slack reached out to composer Kathryn Bostic and librettist Lorene Carey about adapting Bentley’s story.
“She loosely knew about Miss Gladys because she’s a Philadelphian as well,” Slack says of Carey.
As for Bostic, Slack believed that the composer’s experience in film, TV and theater would better equip her to emphasize the time and place of Bentley’s story.
“This piece had to be so much more theatrical than what we know as classical or even operatic,” Slack explains. “I chose Miss Bostic to tell the story because she adds the jazz influence through the orchestral pieces. There’s more jazz and blues influences, inflections in the orchestra and also in the singing. There’s a little scatting in there.”
Over the course of its 15 minute run, Drag will see Slack embodying and exploring Bentley’s life and perspective, from the the outlandish creative heights of her days in Harlem to the heel-turn in the 1950s, and unpacking what it really means to put on performance.
“There’s references to all of that in this piece,” Slack says. “Aren’t we all pretending to be something? To save ourselves from people thinking and having opinions about who we are? […] Aren’t we all being dramatic? I love challenging the audience.”
Bentley’s story aligns with one of Slack’s larger missions as an artist, which is to expand the stories being told through opera and classical music.
“In classical music, we sort of are, I lovingly say, the angel at the top of the Christmas tree,” she says. “Very pretty and untouchable. There are other art forms that are more accessible and more people see themselves in those art forms. In classical music, they don’t see themselves. They don’t hear stories about their lives. And it doesn’t have to just be race and gender. It is just telling more stories.”
The story of a Black drag artist also contains resonance for the world as a whole in 2025, as the rights of queer and non-white Americans dominate political discourse.
“I think that telling a Gladys story is very timely,” Slack says. “Her story was rich. Her story was complicated. Her story is something that people are struggling with right now. This is not only for the community. This is for the time.”
As Slack gears up for Drag’s premiere at the DSO, she’s already imagining ways to expand the work and further honor Bentley and her legacy.
“There’s some loose plans,” she says. “I have this vision of creating a larger work around Miss Bentley. A larger piece. More theatrical, maybe an operatic or chamber version.
“But right now, we’re just focused on having a successful career,” Slack emphasizes.
Drag will premiere at the Dallas Symphony Orchestra as part of Alsop Conducts Brahms on Friday, Nov. 7 and run through Nov. 9. Tickets start at $33 and can be purchased on the DSO’s website.