Love and hate, intrigue and death, compassion and happiness. These are elements of opera that attract Jorge Pedrera, a 46-year-old baritone.
And he knows such matters well, for when Pedrera sings his favorite arias, it is not on the stage of a grand opera house but behind the razor-wire fence and steel doors of the Dade Correctional Institute, where he is serving a life sentence for murder.
Pedrera, prison number DC 041011, is a member of the Inmate Opera Club, believed to be the only group of its kind in a U.S. prison. For him, opera offers an escape from the harsh realities of prison life–and a way to redemption.
“It helps you understand life a little better,” Pedrera told Reuters in a room at the prison, where he and other inmates clad in blue denim uniforms rehearsed for an upcoming performance of Mascagni’s Cavalleria Rusticana.
Pedrera came to the United States 30 years ago from Cuba, where he was a fisherman. He took to the sea again but began using his maritime skills to smuggle marijuana through the Bahamas to Florida.
“You know how it is. Sometimes it involves violence. Someone got killed… I got arrested and blamed.”
Now he is 18 years into his life sentence.
In prison, he said, “I was doing crazy things, drugs, getting into fights.
“I was passing by the library one day and saw some guys ‘round the TV, so I asked what was going on. They were watching an opera video.”
The opera was Rigoletto, and from then on Pedrera was hooked. He is an aficionado of Verdi–“There is always a plot”–and cites Maria Callas as his favorite singer.
Outside in the prison yard, with a glimpse of the Florida Everglades visible through the wire, he offers a commendable rendition of an aria, arms raised to the sky.
Opera has changed his way of thinking and his behavior, he said.
The man who brought opera to the prison is Rolando Valdez, the institution’s librarian.
Valdez fell in love with opera growing up in pre-revolutionary Cuba. He attributes his desire to help those on the lower rungs of society to his father, a judge, who took his son to the Havana slums when he was nine and left him there.
“He said, ‘You must get to know all kinds of people,’” said Valdez, now 59.
About 10 years ago, some of the more educated prisoners approached Valdez with an appeal for more high-brow entertainment.
“They said to me, ‘Do you have anything other than Bruce Lee movies–something cultural?’ I said, ‘I know opera.’”
He brought in videos and showed them on a TV in a corner of the prison library. Soon crowds gathered.
“They loved it–some of them were crying,” Valdez said.
The audience grew, and the Opera Club was started. Now it meets every Saturday and has a library of 250 videos and 50 compact disks. This year the Miami-Dade Cultural Council gave it a $3,500 grant.
In 1994, inmates wrote their own opera. Called “El Caido” (“The Fallen One”), it tells the tale of Jack Bass. Convicted of stealing money from his employee, Bass tries to kill himself before a prison medical orderly convinces him that life is still worth living.
Program coordinator Ray York, prison number 137773, has spent the last 10 of his 29 years behind bars for first-degree murder.
“I thought opera was some fat lady singing,” said York, whose short stature belies his deep bass voice. “Now, when I sing, I can put myself in another place, kick back.”
His involvement with the opera club has pushed him to educate himself in other fields, he said, showing a visitor a sheaf of diplomas and certificates.
He has qualified as a legal clerk and intends to fight his convictions, which he says was riddled with irregularities.
“I was a young kid. They were saying, ‘You’re going to the electric chair if you don’t plead guilty.’”
He firmly believes in opera’s powers of rehabilitation.
“I don’t believe any inmate who was in the club has left and been brought back. And I know a few who have opened up successful businesses–stone-cold killers.”
