No Experience Required: Young Filmmaker Resurrects Great-Grandfather's Opera

As Arlen Parsa stared into a box his aunt pulled from the basement of her Oak Park home, he was faced with a choice.

Could he — a self-proclaimed naive millennial who knew nothing about music — solve an 80-year-old family mystery by resurrecting the long-lost opera written by his great-grandfather?

Or should he just put the lid back on the box?

Parsa made that choice almost two years ago. On Sept. 18, “Andina,” written in the 1930s by Eustasio Rosales, will finally reach the eyes and ears of a live audience in a one-night-only world premiere.

“There was a little bit of a tingling sensation when I first laid my hands on those pages, the pages my great-grandfather had written on, and seeing his hand-written musical score, and being able to touch that,” Parsa said. “I’m not sure if I believe in destiny or fate, but part of me felt like this is something I really had to do.”

Conductor Chris Ramaekers and Arlen Parsa examine the music of Arlen’s great-grandfather.

Parsa, a documentary filmmaker with no prior music experience, Googled “how to put on an opera.”

He contacted experts and followed leads to land Chris Ramaekers, an award-winning conductor, and Pablo Santiago Chin, a Costa Rican-born composer who translated Rosales’ ancient music to a modern computer score. Parsa flexed his film-producing muscles to bring together the cast, the Chicago Composers Orchestra and the Athenaeum Theatre, which can seat 984 people.

But there’s a pressing question that lingers on a story like this, when someone takes a blind leap into unknown territory. What if “Andina” wasn’t any good?

Parsa feared that may have been why the opera had never been performed. But when a handful of singers and a pianist made the music, he was spellbound from the first few notes.

He’s hoping the audience will be equally enchanted. He wants people who care nothing for opera — much like himself before he opened that fateful box — to be intrigued by “Andina.”

Yes, this opera is old as dirt, and the now-brittle pages it was first written on are quickly returning to the Earth. But Parsa pointed out there’s no wise, white-haired opera master pulling strings behind the scenes. “Andina” is engineered and performed by young people.

Parsa is 28, he likes pop and rock, and he said he used to scrunch up his nose and roll his eyes at the ”music for old people.”

“Andina” has helped him appreciate the music, and he hopes the adventure behind this particular opera will draw people to take the risk with him.

Arlen Parsa holds the music of his great-grandfather, Eustasio Rosales.

“This has been a process of discovery, and when we put this show on for the world premiere, we don’t know how it’s going to go,” Parsa said. “I hope people of my generation will X out a Friday night on their calendars to go on this adventure with us.”

Rosales was born in in Bogota, Colombia, and he composed his first overture for orchestra at age 12. He was the first Hispanic/Latin American composer to premiere work at the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, and he wrote “Andina” in Oak Park before he died on Christmas morning in 1934.

Parsa said he found a Chicago Daily News review from the 1930s, when the Chicago Symphony Orchestra played a piece Rosales wrote.

“It says people absolutely loved it,” Parsa said. “There was thunderous applause and they dragged the composer, my great-grandfather, up on stage to bow. It was well received, and that gave me a feeling of, ‘OK, maybe this guy knew what he was doing.’”

Composer Eustasio Rosales conducts a rooftop nightclub band in Chicago, circa 1925.

The project has already gotten some 21st century love, with a fully-backed Kickstarter that’s reaching stretch goals. Parsa said crowdfunding is only the last part of paying for “Andina.” Grants, generous donations and some help from his family have brought the opera this far.

Several Kickstarter rewards include the soundtrack, tickets and DVDs of a behind-the-scenes documentary film, produced by Parsa.

The world premiere of “Andina” will take place on one night: Sept. 18 at 7:30 p.m. at Athenaeum Theatre, 2936 N. Southport Ave., Chicago. Tickets are available for $19 at andinalives.com and Goldstar.

“Andina, The Opera that Never Was” will be performed in Spanish with English supertitles and a full orchestra. It is “a dark, evocative opera that defies the stereotypes of its genre. It tells the story of a young Colombian mountain girl who is caught between two suitors: one, a wealthy don from the city; the other, a simple local farmhand,” according to the Athenaeum Theatre.

Sept. 18 will be end of Rosales’ journey, and his descendants can finally answer the questions they have about what his crowning achievement sounds like. Parsa said he will be in the audience for the performance, watching his great-grandfather’s music and his own efforts finally take the stage.

Photos courtesy of Arlen Parsa.