To most Americans, the “holiday season” only refers to one thing. But through the power of opera, Cerise Lim Jacobs hopes to change that.
In 2018, Jacobs founded White Snake Projects, an opera company whose mission is to give librettists and composers of marginalized backgrounds an equal opportunity to reach the stage. The third iteration of their annual series “Let’s Celebrate!,” consisting of three operas about different holiday traditions around the world, will be showing at The Huntington Theatre on Dec. 14 and 15.
This year, “Let’s Celebrate!” will highlight the celebration of the Black Christ in Chalma, a small community in Mexico; Navruz, the largest Uzbekistani holiday; and La Tomatina, the Spanish tomato-throwing festival. Each play was written or composed by someone from the community being represented.
“Our mission is to tell new American stories of our diverse communities,” Jacobs said. “As an activist opera company, we pay special attention to composers and writers of color who may otherwise never have the opportunity to be heard.”
Jacobs didn’t always know she wanted to work in opera. She was born in Singapore, but her family emigrated in the ‘60s after the country was released as a British Colony. She moved to Australia, then England, then the U.S.—here she met her second husband Charles, who shared his passion for opera with her.
But at this point in her life, she was on track for a successful law career: she graduated from Harvard Law School in 1981 and had partnered with a law firm for 20 years. As she describes it, it was divine intervention that changed her course.
“One day I woke up at 5 a.m.—and I don’t know what possessed me—I wrote the words to my very first opera, ‘Madam White Snake,’” Jacobs said. “One thing led to another, and my little draft that day turned into a full script, and we met a brilliant composer, Zhou Long, to set that text to music.”
“Madam White Snake,” which was based on a famous Chinese legend, premiered in February 2010 to critical acclaim, winning Jacobs a Pulitzer Prize. But this period of great success was followed by great sadness: her husband died that October, right as the opera had its world premiere.
“I went into a very deep depression,” Jacobs said. “But after three years, I felt that Charles gave me a great big kick on my behind and said ‘that’s enough, you need to get going.’ I managed to pull myself up and start working again.”
Jacobs began by partnering with other opera companies to produce her work, but found that the traditional world of opera did not have many opportunities for people like her.
“They had no room for someone with my background—immigrant, female, and Chinese,” Jacobs said. “And I didn’t like the stories that the traditional repertory was telling, because they were very sexist, misogynistic, racist, so on and so forth.”
Since 2018, Jacobs has been committed to making the room she was unable to find. This work goes beyond just highlighting marginalized voices—White Snake Projects commissions four to five new operas a year, providing creatives the funding to pursue their work. As such, the company only performs these new operas that they have a hand in developing.
This approach is in stark contrast to most other opera companies. Due to the niche nature of the medium, most companies primarily put on established shows that have safer returns on investment. Commissioning an opera is risky business, as the process from conception to premiere can take multiple years without obvious reward.
But Jacobs believes their bold approach has paid off—in fact, other opera companies are following in their footsteps.
“We are undergoing a renaissance of new opera,” Jacobs said. “So many companies are commissioning new work now, but some of them commission once every 10 or 20 years, whereas we’ve been doing it four or five times a year for the last six years.”
Through White Snake Projects, Jacobs has helped create the very space she has always wanted to see in opera, a medium that is so special to her—both by platforming creators with outside perspectives and inspiring audiences through social messaging.
Tickets for “Let’s Celebrate!” can be purchased on their website. Their upcoming 2025 season is focused on climate justice, continuing the company’s mission of activist opera.
“We believe that given our platform, we have a special responsibility to deal with social issues through our art, and to promote conversation, discussion, and action,” Jacobs said. “We only do new work that portrays women in a positive way, that has equity and diversity at its center, and that we hope will be a counter to some of the toxic stories still floating around today.”
