Bowser, like her mother Lucinda before her, was enslaved to the wealthy Van Lews and served as the family seamstresses. In one of the spy ring’s activities, Bowser would sew coded messages into the hems of garments and quilts that were then transported to the North. 

In addition to traditional opera aspects, this production includes African-inspired interpretive dancing from the modern dance company Urban Bush Women. Quilting and sewing are part of the plot and even find their way into several songs.

Intelligence will make its world premiere and open the season for the Houston Grand Opera, with shows running during both Quilt Market and Quilt Festival this year. A partnership between Quilts, Inc. and HGO offers a 20% ticket discount using the promo code QUILT20. Click HERE to order. (Excludes Loge/Founder’s Box locations.)

“The forces that are brought together in this piece are extraordinary, the singers and dancers. And director/choreographer Jawole Willa Jo Zollar. I’ve never seen a piece quite like this,” Scheer offers.  

How Scheer and Heggie stumbled across the story is almost a story in itself. The pair were doing a song cycle at the Kennedy Center when a docent at the American History Museum asked Heggie if he was familiar with the story of Van Lew and Bowser. When Heggie responded in the negative, the docent said “Well, that should be your next opera.” And walked away, never to see them pair again.

As the librettist, the bulk of the historical research fell to Scheer, who haunted many libraries and internet sites as well as then-contemporary newspaper reports, including Bowser’s first-hand accounts after the Civil War. He also visited museums in the South and conducted interviews. 

As to how much is history and how much is art, Scheer says the opera “mostly” hews toward the facts of both Van Lew and Bowser’s personal relationship and spy work. Though a scene where Bowser visits the “Confederate White House” in Richmond, Virginia may be apocryphal.

Not invented was the connection between Van Lew and Union commander Ulysses S. Grant when she asked the future President to expunge some of the details of her wartime activities from “official” records. After all, Van Lew was still a Southerner, and her neighbors might not have taken too kindly to knowing about her involvement helping the enemy. 

“She was already a target of disdain and anger from the Richmond community. This rich, white woman who conspired for the North,” Scheer says. “Information was procured and it was significant. But that’s just the tip of the iceberg.”

While Van Lew’s story has been fairly well documented, much of the formerly enslaved Bowser’s was not, and that’s what Intelligence really brings to light. Educated in the north as a child by the Van Lews, she was sent to the African country of Liberia from 1855-1860. Homesick, she wrote to Van Lew and asked to come back home, which she did—arriving by boat in the Baltimore harbor on the eve of the Civil War.

Heading back to Richmond, she was arrested as enslaved people were not allowed to return to the South once freed. Van Lew bailed her out, took her home (where she got married) and the seed of the spy ring was sewn.

“This is a work of art, not a documentary. But we’re involved in Emotional Archaeology. Trying to understand what it felt like. This isn’t the History Channel,” Scheer says. “Through music and dance and design we’re trying to depict what happens. And as the opera unfolds, as Mary Jane is unearthing the secrets of the Confederacy, she’s doing the same for her own life. Secrets which Elizabeth kept from her.”

Part of that involves her mother, Lucinda, an avid quilter. When Intelligence opens, Bowser knows nothing of her mother who is dead, but her story—and a tragic secret—is unveiled at the end with the use of quilts.

Quilts form the basis of some of the dancers’ costumes. A friend of the Van Lew family also owned a seamstress shop, which provided a convenient cover and meeting place for the planners.

Scheer says his research also led him to esteemed documentary filmmaker Ken Burns (already a personal friend), who has a significant personal quilt collection. Burns even explained what he says as some of the differences between Black and White women’s quilting styles during the era.

“The White women had these very tiny stitches and there’s a looser stitching in [Black] style. So, Mary Jane stiches messages into the hems of garments and that’s how she’s able to inform Elizabeth of what’s happening,” he says.

Already, Intelligence is getting national attention for its subject matter and storytelling techniques. And attendees at Quilt Market and Quilt Festival have a chance to be among the first operagoers in the world to see one work of art that pays tribute to another one that’s very familiar to them.