Project Summary

Good Country is a chamber opera based on true accounts of Charley Parkhurst, a trans* stagecoach driver during the California Gold Rush. After surviving a holdup, Charley and his passengers tumble into a saloon for a night of revelry and revelations set to a score by Keith Allegretti, libretto by Cecelia Raker, and stage direction by Alice Stanley. Internationally acclaimed tenor and trans* activist Holden Madagame will join a cast of dynamic performers from UT in bringing to life this gripping story of conflict and kept secrets:

Barmaid - Chang Liu
Charley - Holden Madagame
Husband - Paul Hainey
Lady - Chantal Freeman Soprano
Doctor - Joseph Quintana

With a libretto by Cecelia Raker, music by Keith Allegretti, and stage direction by Alice Stanley, Good Country  will have its first workshop production as part of UT's Cohen New Works Festival, April 15 - 19. 

Through color- and gender-concious casting, this project will have a significant impact on the community in Austin and beyond, as one of the first operas written with a role specifically tailored for the nuances of trans* classical singers’ voices. In addition to creating fantastic new roles for singers of color and bringing an unsung piece of queer history to the stage, this opera has the potential to create future career opportunities for singers whose gender journeys can otherwise limit their careers.

What We Need

Funds from this campaign will go toward paying our cast and musicians, as well as contributing to staging and technical needs. We have generously received a grant from the Fine Arts Diversity Committee at UT to fund travel for Holden Madagame as a guest artist from Germany, and we are currently seeking a means to support the other artists involved in this production. 

In terms of its immediate impact, your contribution will help with set and lighting design, artist stipends, public relations, and much more. Every dollar we receive will help make this a more immersive experience for the audience, and a more artistically rewarding one for the performers. Ultimately, your gift will bring an awareness of important issues in the opera world today—diversity in casting, a new understanding of gender norms and voice types, and the portrayal of underrepresented identities—to the University of Texas, to the greater Austin community, and beyond.

Our Team

Holden Madagame

Holden Madagame is an American tenor and University of Michigan School of Music, Theatre, and Dance alumni. He studied with bass-baritone Stephen West as a mezzo soprano, and currently lives in Görlitz, Germany.

Holden is a passionate trans* activist forging the way for trans-identified artists to work openly in opera and classical music. He hopes to reach out to both audiences and professionals to discuss gender and sexuality whenever possible.

Since beginning testosterone in autumn 2015, he has sung often both as a soloist and as a chorus singer. In 2017 he participated in the Glyndebourne Academy, where he also wrote a piece for the Independent UK about his experiences. Since then he has worked for companies such as Passaggio Oper, Fulham Opera, Gerhart Hauptmann Theater in Görlitz, and the Brandenburgisches Konzertorchester, with whom he recently debuted the role of Wenzel from ‘Die verkaufte Braut’.

As an advocate and dedicated activist, he strives to educate and inform people about queer and trans* issues through videos, articles, and online discussions. To support Holden with his activism, he invites you to visit his Patreon page: www.patreon.com/holdenmad. For more information, please visit www.holdenmadagame.com.

Alice Stanley

Alice Stanley is a writer, director, performer, and producer. They are one of the Founders of Cohesion Theatre Company in Baltimore, MD, where they served as Artistic Producer for the first three seasons. Their full-length play Sally McCoy has been produced by Cohesion and The Barter Theatre, and nominated for the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize. Alice has directed for and had pieces produced by many theaters, including Kitchen Dog Theater, Trinity Street Players, Fells Point Corner Theater (where their piece recently won Audience Favorite in the 10x10x10), Interrobang Theatre Company, Spotlighters Theatre, Strand Theater, Baltimore Shakespeare Factory, Gadfly Theatre Productions, and Rapid Lemon Productions. They are currently pursuing their MFA in Directing at the University of Texas at Austin. For more information, please visit www.alicestanley.com.

Cecelia Raker

Originally from northern New Mexico, Cecelia Raker is a playwright, librettist, instigator, dramaturg, and director. After spending nine years in Boston, she's now based in Austin, Texas. 

Cecelia is fascinated by the power of fantastical imagination at threshold moments in women’s lives, and by stories of people at the margins who break their dominant culture's boxes. 

Her one-woman challah-baking interactive play is a semifinalist for SPACE at Ryder Farm’s 2019 Creative Residency, and her play Bog Butter was a finalist for the 2018 Playwrights’ Center Core Apprenticeship. Her play La Llorona premiered with Fresh Ink Theatre (Boston) in 2017 and went on to Cohesion Theatre (Baltimore) in 2018; it was a runner-up for the 2016 Princess Grace award and honorably mentioned on the 2016 Kilroys list, and won second place for the Kennedy Center’s 2018 Playwriting Award for young audiences. Her work has been developed and produced with Venus Theatre (Maryland), Project:project, the Boston Theater Marathon, the Great Plains Theater Conference, the ART’s Loeb Experimental Theater, Harvard Playwrights’ Festival, and a variety of other venues. She was a 2017-2018 Massachusetts Cultural Council Artist Fellow, and she is in her second year of an MFA in playwriting (with a smattering of poetry, TV, and fiction) at the Michener Center for Writers at UT Austin.  www.ceceliaraker.weebly.com.

Keith Allegretti

A native of Santa Fe, New Mexico, Keith Allegretti is a composer and pianist who enjoys working comfortably in many genres, including chamber, orchestral, vocal, and electronic music, and even musical theater. His music has been performed in Santa Fe, Houston, Berlin, Ann Arbor, New York and elsewhere by professional and amateur ensembles, including Santa Fe New Music, Quartetto Indaco, the Rice University Chorale, the University of Michigan Symphony Orchestra, Circuit Bridges, the Santa Fe Community Orchestra, the American Creators Ensemble, and First Readings Project. He holds degrees in composition from Rice University and the University of Michigan. For more information, please visit www.keithallegretti.com.