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Virginia Opera concluded its 50th anniversary season with the world premiere of Loving v. Virginia, by composer Damien Geter and librettist Jessica Murphy Moo, presented in Fairfax, Norfolk, and Richmond. The opera recounts the story of Mildred and Richard Loving, the couple at the heart of the aptly named Supreme Court case that overturned interracial marriage bans. (Upon reading Mildred’s letter in the opera, one of their lawyers marvels at a case with a name “so beautiful, it’s like a song.”) Richard, a white man, and Mildred (née Jeter), a woman of color, hailed from Caroline County in eastern Virginia but were forced to travel to Washington, DC to marry in 1958 because of their home state’s prohibition of interracial marriage. Decided unanimously by the Earl Warren Court in June 1967, the Loving case held that such laws violated the US Constitution. Courts later cited the case in rulings on same-sex marriage, including Obergefell v. Hodges (2015).

A co-commission of Virginia Opera and the Richmond Symphony, Loving portrays the real people behind the famous ruling. The opera opens with the morning of Supreme Court oral arguments in April 1967 before going back in time a decade. Richard seeks Mildred’s parents’ blessing in marriage and the spouses are arrested in their bedroom in the middle of the night before being exiled from the state for 25 years.

After moving to DC, they ultimately decide to file suit with the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) so they can return home together. Murphy Moo’s libretto succeeds in offering a human-scaled perspective of a major historical event, seamlessly aligned with Geter’s score, without losing the audience in legal minutiae. Her close attention to small details (such as the nickname by which Richard Loving refers to his wife, “Bean”) helps convey the Lovings as well-rounded characters, not abstract figures from a history book.

Geter’s colorful score effectively conveys the opposition between the Lovings’ love of home and their interactions with the judicial system. Violins are omnipresent in opera, but this was the first time I heard a fiddle in an opera. Melodies inspired by country and bluegrass traditions of rural Virginia evoke the Lovings’ hometown, a metaphorical Eden from which they are expelled by the racist policy of the state. Lush swells of strings with echoes of Puccini illustrate the Lovings’ romance and contrast with more minimalist moments.

A Morse code motif symbolic of “trouble” recurs throughout the opera, an undercurrent of tension that signifies the danger facing the couple. Particularly potent sections include Geter’s musical characterization of government bureaucracy in the form of an earworm melody sung by Virginia marriage license clerks (“know the code, follow the code, do your job”) and the creepy soundscape of Mildred Loving’s solitary confinement in Act I, replete with drips and other mysterious jail sounds.

Geter and Murphy Moo’s most revelatory innovation is their decision to personify the law as a character of sorts in the opera. An eight-person Law Chorus sings excerpts from legal documents, including the Lovings’ arrest warrant and Virginia’s Racial Integrity Act, in a robotic monotone, syllable by syllable. Geter’s rigid composition for these choristers is as inflexible as the black and white letter of the law. The striking contrast of this cold, essentially inhuman theme with the warmer themes representing the Lovings drives home the injustice of the state’s assertion of control over their private lives. Geter is likely the first composer to score an opera for gavel as percussion. It may seem a little on the nose, perhaps, but the instrumentation is moving and recalls Gilda’s determined knocks on Sparafucile’s door in the dénouement of Verdi’s Rigoletto. Geter’s gavel provides an equally foreboding reminder of fate.

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The Richmond Symphony realized the potential of this engaging score under the baton of Adam Turner, Virginia Opera’s artistic director and chief conductor. Turner effectively led the orchestra through Loving’s shifts in style. He gave the more tender and poignant parts of Geter’s score the necessary space to breathe while leaning into the tenser pacing of others. Virginia Opera’s chorus appeared in fine form and nimbly shouldered the various roles it was tasked with, including peppy drag race onlookers, menacing fellow prisoners in the Caroline County jail, and civil rights protesters.

Soprano Flora Hawk and baritone Jonathan Michie starred as Mildred and Richard Loving, respectively. Hawk’s expressive acting made the role fit her like a glove. She portrayed Mildred as shy at heart, later spurred into action by injustice but never seeking the fame of heroism. Her clarion notes and velvety sound were captivating, particularly in Mildred’s Act II aria, when she sings of “the house called love.” Michie was a solid Richard, his baritone as sturdy as the house his character dreams of building for his wife. Geter’s decision to write this leading role for a baritone rather than a tenor defies much precedent but the lower register of the part grounds Richard with a certain dignity and moral authority relative to the tenor roles of the sheriff and Judge Leon Bazile, who oversaw the Lovings’ criminal trial. Benjamin Werley played the two parts with gusto, encapsulating the injustice of the state with his powerful tenor.

Mezzo-soprano Tesia Kwarteng was a standout in the role of Annette Byrd, Mildred’s more self-assured cousin. Kwarteng’s warm, plummy mezzo made her a confident foil to Hawk’s lead. Baritone Troy Cook and tenor Christian Sanders gave earnest portrayals of Bernard Cohen and Philip Hirschkop, respectively, the young and courageous ACLU lawyers who represented the Lovings. According to a program note, Hirschkop, the only one of the two who is still living, helped Murphy Moo with fact-checking.

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As Mildred’s mother, Musiel Byrd Jeter, mezzo-soprano Melody Wilson shone in a sensitive and touching aria after Mildred was jailed. Contralto Alissa Anderson’s elegant phrasing made much of the smaller role of Richard’s mother, Lola Allen Loving. Baritone Phillip Bullock delivered a poignant performance as Mildred’s father, Theoliver Jeter, warning the couple of the danger they faced.

Loving v. Virginia is an opera strongly focused on duality: the family versus the state, morality versus the law. The idea of opposition is embedded in the title. Mezzo-soprano Denyce Graves-Montgomery, who directed the production, leveraged this dynamic. The simple but effective set design by Mikiko Suzuki MacAdams deployed sets of doors to stand for the Jeters’ and Lovings’ homes in Virginia. This device underlined the danger of crossing the threshold between private and public space as the Lovings could freely be together indoors while stepping outside risked legal sanction. McAdams’ contrasting projections of pastoral Caroline County fields and dark, claustrophobic mid-century DC spoke to the Lovings’ homesickness. (A set piece of a DC stoplight bristling with a confusing mass of signage struck this resident of the nation’s capital as highly accurate.)

Graves-Montgomery’s blocking of the Law Chorus, whether moving as a phalanx across the stage or crowding Mildred Loving in her claustrophobic jail cell, lent insights to the production, though the masks obscuring their faces suggested the Man in the Iron Mask more than the long arm of the law. Period-appropriate costumes by Jessica Jahn gave the production an immersive quality, while thoughtful lighting by Xavier Pierce emphasized the opera’s themes by placing the Lovings in stark visual opposition to the unjust society in which they lived. Virginia Opera will continue its commitment to contemporary work and exploration of the commonwealth’s history next season with a production of Jake Heggie and Gene Scheer’s Intelligence, an opera about Civil War spies in Richmond.