1. What drew you to Dolores Huerta as the subject of an opera, and how did you begin the journey of bringing her story to life through music?

Dolores' story had been calling to me long before I started writing operas. Even when I was just a fledgling composer, I knew she was someone whose life demanded to be told onstage. There are so many chapters of her journey that are powerful enough to stand alone, but I also knew I wasn’t ready yet. I needed time — as a composer and as a person — to be able to do it justice.

The connection was personal, too. Being related to her, having spoken to her over the years about different points in her life, made it even more real for me. One moment that stuck with me was the assassination of Bobby Kennedy in 1968. It wasn’t early in her career — she had already spent more than a decade fighting. But it also wasn’t the end. She's still going strong today, into 2025.

What drew me in was the idea of perseverance: when you lose something so monumental, when you feel crushed by it, how do you keep fighting? That’s the story I wanted to tell — one that everyone can relate to today. It’s a reminder that the only real choice, the only honest way forward, is to keep going. When I think of Dolores, that’s what I see: there’s no excuse not to keep pushing for what’s right.

2. Writing opera is often a deeply collaborative process. You are Dolores’ cousin. What was it like working with a familiar connection, and how did that affect you as the music took shape?

Honestly, I was nervous at the beginning. Knowing what a monumental figure she is — and being connected to her personally — made the stakes feel incredibly high. I wanted to honor her and her story and do it justice.

As Marella and I started interviewing Dolores, doing fact-checks, and imagining conversations for the libretto, we realized something important: the character of Dolores on stage could never capture all the incredible things that she's done. Once we sort of let go of needing to make the stage Dolores the same as the real-life Dolores, we realized we could dive into this character and make a whole universe out of it for the opera.

Once we accepted that, we were free to create someone who is spiritually and emotionally true to the real woman, but who could live fully inside the opera. That freedom let me really step into her shoes, especially imagining her state of mind in 1968: feeling doubt, feeling loss, not knowing yet that she would keep changing history for decades more.

Dolores is such a forward-thinking person. Even when we asked about the past, she would pivot immediately to talking about today and the future. That made it hard sometimes to get her into a reflective space, but it also showed me how deeply her spirit is tied to movement and action. The assassination of Bobby Kennedy was a real pivotal point. It wasn't early in her career. She had already been doing what she does for over a decade. It also wasn’t in the middle of her career. This was 1968 and she's still going strong in 2025.

One of my favorite moments was after the orchestral preview, sitting down to dinner with her, talking about what rang true and what didn’t. She helped fine-tune a few details, but she trusted us — trusted that the opera, even with invented conversations, stayed true to her ethos.

At first, the pressure felt overwhelming. But once I got into the writing process, once I trusted myself to bring everything I know and everything I feel into the music, it became the most challenging and rewarding project I’ve ever done.

Nicolás Lell Benavides and librettist Marella Martin Koch

3. What was the process like going through West Edge Opera’s online opera development program Aperture, during covid, to now being on the precipice of a world premiere opera?

Aperture was an intense experience. The stakes felt high right from the start because I wanted so badly to tell this story, to earn the opportunity to finish it.

At first, I found myself getting caught up in worrying about the logistics — how do we get this commission, how do we make it happen — and I lost sight for a moment of why I wanted to do this in the first place.

When I finally let go of that anxiety and focused on writing the two arias, everything shifted. I just let myself love the music, trust the story. And from that point, I felt deep down that Dolores was going to happen — whether with West Edge or somewhere else, it just felt too important to fade away.

Looking back, I realize how much life was happening at that time. My son was born literally the week Aperture started. I was finishing my doctorate. My mind was so much on family that maybe it saved me from spiraling into the stress.

The other thing Aperture showed me was how much I missed collaboration. Being able to talk to colleagues, bounce crazy ideas off each other, get honest feedback — that energy is something you don’t often get after school. It reminded me how much I love building something together with a team.

And now, four years later, standing at the edge of a world premiere — it feels surreal and exactly right.

4. Every opera has its challenges—was there a moment in Dolores that really pushed you as a composer?

Oh man, Dolores pushed me harder than anything I’ve ever done. Every skill I have was stretched to the limit.

The biggest challenge, though, was form. Writing a beautiful page of music, orchestrating a great moment — those are things I knew how to do. But stepping back, looking at the opera from a bird’s eye view, shaping the entire emotional journey — that was a whole new level. My breath was taken away by the scope of what Marella and I were trying to do.

I’d sometimes write a section that worked by itself, but when I zoomed out, it didn’t fit into the bigger story. It was frustrating, but it forced me to realize that form — the architecture of the whole piece — is what matters most. Fortunately, Marella is always an eager collaborator, and when I ran into compositional issues, we’d look at solutions from every angle, whether it be writing different music, asking for new or adjusted words, or adapting an old aria into a new trio because it occurred to us we needed all three of our main characters to be in conversation.

We had to make sure the audience never got lost. They had to always know where they were in the story, feel carried through the emotional highs and lows. Dolores had to create a whole universe, from exhaustion and desperation to hope and joy.

The first scene alone keeps going once it starts. We wanted the audience to feel the physical exhaustion of the farmworkers — to feel the dirt, the hunger, the heat — so that when Bobby Kennedy arrives, his appearance really means something.

Every step of building this opera made me ask hard questions: What does the story need? How do I save the singers' voices for the most important moments? How do I build a world that honors Dolores and functions as great theater?

In the end, it was the hardest thing I've ever done — and the most fulfilling.

5. What do you hope audiences take away from experiencing Dolores, especially those who might be new to opera or unfamiliar with her story?

I hope audiences walk away knowing that this story isn't over. It's still being written.

The fight for justice that Dolores embodies is not a closed chapter in American history. Neither are the stories of displacement, slavery, internment, civil rights — those struggles are still shaping our world.

If someone sees Dolores and thinks, “I'm so glad that’s in the past,” then we’ve missed the point. The opera is about showing that someone is always needed to pick up the torch — to fight, to organize, to refuse to be deterred.

Dolores is the heart of this opera, but it’s also about the whole coalition of people who fought alongside her. It’s about community, solidarity, action.

I want people to leave asking themselves: Am I stepping up? Am I willing to make a sacrifice for someone else’s dignity?

Because that's the real legacy of Dolores — and it's a call that’s still ringing out today

Bringing Dolores to Life: 5 Hot Seat Questions with Composer Nicolás Lell Benavides

5 Questions with Mark and Jonathan about Aperture and the world premiere of its first commission Dolores by Nicolás Lell Benavides and Marella Martin Koch