by Naomi Andre
Calling this book Black Opera: History, Power, Engagement is meant to chart a terrain in interdisciplinary opera studies that incorporates a way of thinking about what black opera can be. In this study I go beyond only mentioning black composers and singers, and discuss a historical context and political directive for having black voices telling their own stories and becoming full participants in a genre that had been closed through segregation. Calling something black opera might imply that there is a white opera or other identity-related operas; this is not my intention. This book is not the last word on what black opera is, but it is an important starting point for how we can reinvent a term to include new voices, narratives, and experiences. This study does not talk about Latin America, Asia, India, and many other spaces that have been important in black experience. While I cover parts of Europe, the United States, and South Africa, there are still many stories in these places that augment and can shift the telling I present here. Rather than a thorough coverage and listing of all black opera, I seek to initiate a discourse that is capacious and welcomes contrapuntal voices. In this study, I use the terms black, African American, white, coloured/colored (a term used during apartheid that I use very limitedly and only in referring to that specific context), and mixed race all with caution and care. I realize that these words mean different things across the Atlantic, and my primary goal is to be sensitive and not at all offensive; my apologies if the nuance of my language use causes anyone discomfort.
Behind the Scenes: Crafting this Narrative
As a black opera scholar and fan, I hold myself accountable. To be honest, I had not really noticed the use of blackface makeup until after I had been attending opera regularly for more than a decade. While I was perhaps a little naïve as an audience member, I was also a person of the time who experienced and accepted the cultural conventions around me. The larger picture of opera and social consciousness provide an important helpful context to understand how this could happen.
Let me set the scene. Edward Said’s Orientalism (which first outlined how the West had constructed a paradigm for seeing the East—a stand-in for basically any non-Western power—as inferior and weaker) was not published until 1978, and his provocative essays on Aida that put the opera in the context of colonialism and imperialism were not published until 1987 (and reprinted in 1993).9 Though there were other people writing about identity and representation, cultural politics, and theoretical frameworks that challenge forms of hegemony (around race, gender, sexuality, and class), this scholarship had been neither fully integrated into the discipline of musicology nor discussed by, or incorporated into, mainstream reviews for audiences of classical music. For me, Said’s clear writing in his constructions of power and privilege and his insistence that the arts (literature, music, visual art, theater, and dance) were not innocent of politics, were especially compelling for bringing what was happening onstage into the present day. These writings and my reading across disciplines helped me “see” opera in new ways. Yet even as Said and others were asking questions about orientalism and exoticism in Aida, the “on the ground” practical reality of the common practice of blackface makeup was not discussed.10
I started going to the Metropolitan Opera in the 1980s while I was in college in New York City. Opera audiences then were a bit different: today, the “realism” onstage needs to be more closely aligned with what we experience in daily life (though I am not claiming that opera is just like real life).11 The 1980s were still a time when opera was first an aural phenomenon and secondly a visual event. Opera of the time featured elaborate sets and costumes for their sumptuousness, placed less emphasis on a true-to-life representation of action or a compelling imitation of life in the present or the past.12 Audiences did not expect singers to move around much onstage, and the depiction of “reality” was a very stylized concept. Videos of opera performances were rather rare, and the broadcast of opera on television could never keep up with the demand of a true opera lover; such events were all too infrequent. Many opera fans experienced live opera primarily through real-time Saturday afternoon radio broadcasts sponsored by Texaco; these started in 1931 and continued through 2004, having since been carried forward through sponsorship by the Toll Brothers homebuilding company since 2005.13
Of course, the internet (with YouTube and other streaming and downloaded opera performances) was decades away at the time. People learned and got to know operas through audio recordings (records, cassettes, or the then-new media of compact discs). When one was fortunate to be able to attend an opera performance, and admittedly this has always been an expensive art form, it was not uncommon to sit far away from the stage. Singers who were supposed to “look the part” of the role regarding age and weight, and the use of supertitles (or seat titles, that are now used at the Met), were newer conventions in opera that became more standard in the 1990s and early 2000s.14
As a student living in the city, I would rather spend my money on more opera tickets for less-expensive far-off seats than only a few opera tickets in the better seats. So I stood for a lot of operas both behind the Orchestra seats on the main floor and way up high in Family Circle, where the sound was exponentially better (yet at the expense of seeing the details of what was happening onstage). The Met is a very large opera house by any standard (it seats almost four thousand; in addition to the orchestra level, there are five horseshoe balcony levels, with Family Circle being the top of the fifth balcony level), and it is easy to grow accustomed to missing specific details onstage.
My purpose in outlining Said’s ideas about representation and power, the architecture of the Met, and the emphasis on the aural sound of opera in the 1980s is to clarify how the visual component of blackface makeup in opera was somewhat invisible to so many in the audience. It is not meant to be an “excuse,” but rather a way to help explain how so many people did not look at opera closely, even when they were there at a live performance. Of course, the makeup was not invisible, and the audience was well aware of who was singing the leading roles. Additionally, many people were very aware of the race of the singer, and many of the black female singers of that time were among the biggest draws. Roberta Alexander, Martina Arroyo, Kathleen Battles, Harolyn Blackwell, Grace Bumbry, Hilda Harris, and Jessye Norman were not only in my all-time Favorite Singers Club, they were hugely popular with practically everyone.15
After the Blackness in Opera collection of essays was published in 2012, I wanted to further pursue a direction that had opened up during the research for that project: blackness in opera is something that extends beyond the United States and Europe. In juxtaposition to the operatic tradition in the West, I found compelling cases of opera performance (adaptation and newly composed works) in sub-Saharan Africa. Two case studies came from South Africa (U-Carmen eKhayelitsha [2005], and Winnie: The Opera [2011]) and one from Senegal (Karmen Geï [2001]).16 As I explored the context around U-Carmen eKhayelitsha and saw the final week of rehearsals and first two performances of Winnie: The Opera at the State Theatre in Pretoria in the spring of 2011, I found an uncanny and exciting new world for opera in South Africa that promoted and highlighted black people as singers, subjects of operas, and composers working in interracial performance contexts.
This encounter has helped shape how I now think about and approach all opera, especially in terms of how I think about representation in the questions that ground this study: who is being represented, who is telling the story, and who watches and interprets the story. While Karmen Geï does not seem to be part of a larger Senegalese operatic tradition that I have found, the two South African operas opened up a different landscape.17 The South African operas were not two anomalous examples but instead were indicative of a larger situation and reflect several currents in opera in the United States. As I looked at opera in the United States and South Africa, I saw connections across the articulation of gender, race, sexuality, and nation. For me, opera is no longer a cloistered tradition opened to the chosen few in opera houses dotted acros
s the West. My current world of opera includes these South African voices too and expands the relevance of opera across race, gender, sexuality, and nation. The questions now became, how can a genre that resisted the participation of black people tell us anything about the past or the present in the context of such strong cultures of white supremacy? What can we gain from looking at opera, such an elitist genre, about racial regimes by looking at how race is represented in the past and the present on both sides of the Atlantic?
The history of opera in South Africa is a story that is still being written.18 In this study, I sketch an outline of specific themes and topics that includes an overview of a few early figures (singers, composers, supporters) who have laid a foundation for the larger Black South African opera scene. My story also incorporates operas written in and about the United States that highlight the vantage points of African Americans. Looming in the background is the European opera tradition that provided a model for bringing music and drama together. Ultimately, I realized that though the worlds of South Africa, the United States, and Europe are distinct with individual characteristics, bringing them all together in my narrative enriched the larger picture rather than limiting it. When I sat these case studies side by side, I realized that similar (though not the same) themes emerged and the bigger story became richer when I kept them next to each other—not fully in conversation, but juxtaposed so that they presented a contrasting whole.
Behind the Scenes: Downstaging Black Voices and a Shadow Culture
The word downstage is a blocking term in theater practice and refers to the portion of the stage closest to the audience at the front of the playing area. In studying the downstaging of black voices, I seek to construct a story about race, gender, sexuality, and nation that had been relegated to the margins, to uncover this story and bring it to the forefront of how we have thought about opera at the end of the twentieth century and into the millennium.
I use the term shadow culture carefully. I am not implying that black participation in opera is a second-tier endeavor that dimly reflects the glory of the mainstream tradition. Describing something as being in the shadows can inadvertently give an impression that the thing fully illuminated is the true art, and that which is obscured is of lesser importance. This is not at all my intention for discussing blackness in these operas.
The history of black involvement with opera in the United States can be seen as a shadow culture to the all-white and segregated opera scene existent in the United States through the first half of the twentieth century. A similar thing could be said about opera in South Africa up to 1994. Uncovering this shadow culture reveals a different narrative of opera that has a parallel, yet obscured, lineage to the dominant tradition in opera in both countries. This new story of opera achieves much of what the dominant opera culture had accomplished, but it traces different terrain and addresses different questions. In contradistinction to the dominant opera traditions in the United States and South Africa, the shadow cultures I am identifying feature black participation and black subjects in ways that involve a deep engagement and care in representation that is not present in the dominant culture. The dominant culture focuses on stories about black characters in ways that exoticize the subjects; for example, Verdi’s 1871 opera Aida is a made-up story by Italians and Frenchmen set in the time of the Pharaohs with little knowledge of the historical Egyptians and Ethiopians and makes no reference to living Egyptians or Ethiopians during the late nineteenth century.19 Otello presents a similar situation with a story based on Shakespeare’s play Othello that has little connection to the real lives of North Africans (Otello/Othello is a Moor) living in European settings and, as the two opening case studies indicate, has a history of being performed by nonblack singers in blackface. The shadow culture of opera brings black perspectives and experiences downstage in our narrative of how the story is told and who is telling and interpreting the story.
For South Africa, a shadow opera culture involves a new post-apartheid situation where, for the first time, blacks are legally allowed to participate and receive training in opera programs. This has had a remarkable effect in less than a full generation; there is currently an incredibly vibrant opera scene with black singers performing at the highest levels in domestic and international opera houses, productions of repertory operas in Western productions, productions of repertory operas in South African settings, and newly composed operas by black South Africans. With operas based on historical figures such as the Zulu Princess Magogo kaDinuzulu, Nelson Mandela, and Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, black South Africans are writing their stories and history into the repertory. In the United States, there is a similar writing of black people’s experiences into opera. In this study, I focus on one recently composed work, From the Diary of Sally Hemings (2001). I also include adapted works from the past that take nonblack operas and adapt them in black settings: Bizet’s 1875 opera Carmen presented in two later American settings (as Carmen Jones [1954] and Carmen: A Hip-Hopera [2001]) and one in a township outside of Cape Town, South Africa (U-Carmen eKhayelitsha [2005]). Additionally, I discuss the best-known American opera that focuses on race, Gershwin’s 1935 Porgy and Bess, and analyze the recent setting from 2011 for the Broadway stage.
The shadow opera culture in the United States is much more extensive than can be included in any one study. There are forgotten or previously lost operas that are resurfacing, and there are recent operas and composers who are writing new stories. A particularly fertile field for this inquiry is in the world of the Harlem Renaissance, with the operas of Scott Joplin, the recently discovered operas of Harry Lawrence Freeman, and the operas of many other composers whose works have been unperformed and hidden from circulation.20 One of the most important African American opera composers is Anthony Davis, whose operas include topics on black subjects (X: The Life and Times of Malcolm X [1986] and Amistad [1997]), as well as on themes as varied as science fiction (Under the Double Moon [1989]), the abduction of Patty Hearst (Tania [1992]), and a contemporary Native American family affected by the past (Wakonda’s Dream [2007]). Davis’s operas tell a story of American life encompassing multiple experiences and vantage points that center-stage race, ethnicity, and gender in a jazz-inspired voice. Davis is also the only black opera composer to have had multiple operas commissioned and performed in major opera houses. Adolphus Hailstork is another black composer who has had multiple operas given professional performances. The Dayton Opera Company commissioned and premiered his Paul Laurence Dunbar: Common Ground (1995); Hailstork termed the thirty-five-minute production “an operatic theaterpiece.” His second opera, Joshua’s Boots, called “an opera in one act,” was commissioned by the Opera Theatre of St. Louis and first performed in 2000. The opera takes up themes of the Great Migration to the west and focuses on black cowboys and the all-black Buffalo Soldiers.21 Hailstork wrote his third operatic work, Robeson, for the Trilogy Opera Company of Newark, New Jersey, performed in 2014.22
Leslie Adams, Regina Harris Baiocchi, George Lewis, Dorothy Rudd Moore, Richard Thompson—these are just a few of the black composers with whom I have spoken who have each composed at least one opera and would write more if there were better opportunities for commissions and performances.23 Composer Nkeiru Okoye, professor and director of music theory and composition at the State University of New York at New Paltz, is a recent important voice to have emerged on the classical art music scene with symphonic and theatrical works (The Journey of Phillis Wheatley [2005]; Brooklyn Cinderella [2011]; and Invitation to a Die-In [2017], (commissioned in memory of Trayvon Martin), many of which are based on African American diasporic themes. Okoye’s largest operatic work (at the time of this writing) is the two-act Harriet Tubman: When I Crossed That Line to Freedom (2014).
The emerging group of operas documenting key stories from African American experience continues at the time of this writing. I learned of two new operas in September 2017, the first, a work still in progress, Little Rock Nine, being composed by Tania León
with a libretto by long-time Anthony Davis collaborator, Thulani Davis. This new work commemorates the integration of Little Rock, Arkansas’s Central High School in the fall of 1957.24 We Shall Not Be Moved, the second opera which fortuitously I was able to attend, is a powerful meditation that is part history and set in the present, about the situation that led up to the 1985 bombing of the Move group in Philadelphia, composed by Daniel Bernard Roumain with a libretto by Marc Bamuthi Joseph and directed/choreographed by Bill T. Jones (co-commissioned by Opera Philadelphia, the Apollo Theater, and Hackney Empire in London, premiered in 2017).25
There are nonblack composers working with black collaborators and setting stories that focus on black experiences. The collaboration between Richard Danielpour and Toni Morrison on their opera Margaret Garner (based on the historical figure behind Morrison’s main character in her 1987 Pulitzer Prize–winning novel Beloved) is an example of a narrative rewriting history with the black experience of slavery foregrounded into opera. Two other recent examples of the shadow culture include Charlie Parker’s Yardbird by composer Daniel Schnyder with a libretto by Bridgette A. Wimberly (premiered by Opera Philadelphia [2015]) and Daniel Sonenberg’s The Summer King: An Opera on the Life of Josh Gibson with a libretto by Sonenberg and Daniel Nester with additional lyrics by Mark Campbell (premiered in Portland, Maine [2014]; revived by the Pittsburgh Opera [2017] and Michigan Opera Theatre [2018]), about one of the best power hitters and catchers in the history of baseball (Gibson [1911–1947] played for the American Negro Leagues and was, in 1972, the second black player in the Negro leagues to be inducted in the National Baseball Hall of Fame).26 All of these works are part of what I call the shadow culture of opera.