Black Opera

by Naomi Andre

  Angelo Gobbato’s experiences, participation, and resistance in the evolving artistic landscape under apartheid can be juxtaposed to the experiences of Neo Muyanga, a South African composer born in Soweto during apartheid.36 Through various opportunities, and as a way to stay safe during the violence of the 1980s, Muyanga was able to study abroad in Italy and later work in the United Kingdom. While in Italy, he received a strong education that included a focus on Western art music, and he was part of a traveling choir that sang madrigals and other classical music. He graduated in 1993 and moved to the United Kingdom to write music for Footprints Theatre company in Nottingham and work in radio for the BBC. During this time, he was also a founding member of the pop band Blk Sonshine, a group that “was about playing acoustic guitars doing a kind of roots, African meets pan-Africanist project” and toured in the United States.37 En route back to South Africa in 2000, he spent time visiting the Yared College of Music in Ethiopia, which fueled his interest in musics from all over the world. In Ethiopia he became especially interested in Ethiopian liturgical music and their jazz scene.

  Coming of age during apartheid and being in exile opened up the possibilities of experiences and influences Muyanga encountered. When he returned to South Africa in 2000, the post-apartheid era and his celebrity for being in Blk Sonshine allowed him to have more mobility and options. He moved to Cape Town, where he did not know a lot of people. Of this time, he said:

  And I’m living inside my own head, reading lots of books about choral music, from outside, reading about American choral music, the Negro Spiritual. I’m hearing Jessye Norman sing, I’m hearing Paul Robeson sing and it occurs to me that there’s a conversation among the black intelligentsia in the US that speaks about classical music and speaks about blackness at the same time. … So it becomes a very important time for me to try and synthesize some kind of understanding about what the political project is that links South African jazz, American protest song with the church, Martin Luther King, songs like “We Shall Overcome,” “N’kosi Sikelele iAfrika” and how that relates to how this community can articulate itself in a slightly different way to the way we had done up until that point.38

  These are the types of connections that inform Muyanga’s compositional voice. He also cites musical influences from the countries where he has traveled, recognizing a strong bond with African American artists. In addition to Jessye Norman and Paul Robeson, he includes Bobby McFerrin, Harry Belafonte; Italians Lucio Dalla and Luciano Pavarotti; and Blk Sonshine and Wu Tang. His interest in international connections are brought in conversation with musical influences from home as he also includes people from South Africa and talks about Sibongile Khumalo: “It’s in this investigation of the archive that I’m finding a connection to missionary schooling people like Tiyo Songa and how he becomes this metaphor for the hybridized African.”39

  The bringing together of musical voices from across the Atlantic was bred into Muyanga’s formative experience and characterizes an important feature of his music. About Tiyo Songa, he uses the phrase “hybridized African,” and this syncretic combination of disparate elements is something he is mindful of. His experiences provide one illustration of the situation wherein South African black composers lived outside of South Africa at points during the struggle and came of age in areas where they had access to better educational experiences around music.40 The operatic voices such experiences give rise to imply a great deal about powerful directions emerging in opera today for Muyanga, Ndodana-Breen, Khumalo, and others. Though these composers have training in Western classical music, there is also another set of experiences—Western music brought to South Africa during colonization and apartheid, as well as the very diverse South African traditional musics that have been an important part of their culture. The quick rise in the postapartheid South African vibrant opera scene reveals what I have discussed as the “shadow culture” of opera in South Africa as well as their deeply rooted connection to choral singing and song as a way to interact with oppression (as resistance). Muyanga brings these things together:

  I started engaging with people who were from the choral movement and started working with them on a number of pieces I was writing that I thought could really benefit from a choral treatment. And then it occurred to me that all the conversations I was hearing, and in all the competitions or rehearsals that I was attending, they were singing these arias, these arias from western opera. And they were singing them right before or right after they sang a so-called traditional piece, and there was this great facility with moving from the one paradigm to the other, there was no, it seemed to me, dichotomy with them.41

  Such a facility to move between different musical styles so smoothly reveals a different thinking about the role and way opera, singing, and Western classical music fits into South African culture in these first decades after apartheid. As the country finds its new voice and articulates a new identity, what it means to be a black South African is evolving. As someone who has worked in many different musical genres and styles, including opera, Muyanga sits on several arts councils and performance boards. He is serious about his roles both as a composer and as someone who helps keep the arts alive in performance.

  I think what my job should be in that space is to help us think through what opera and classical music means for our country today, because it’s not the kind of thing that government can get away with saying “oh no this is a western imposition and it’s kicked out’. … [M]y politicking around black opera, and my positioning around black opera is about that. It’s a project that seeks to articulate the history of opera in the black communities. And to argue that it’s indigenized. It’s no longer a western imposition, it’s indigenized, it’s internalised by many, many people in our communities.42

  Though it seems to be a radical formation that opera is now an indigenized South African musical form, it is clear to see how Muyanga has brought his experiences together. All of us living in the twenty-first century are removed from the original contexts of opera’s flourishing in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and the likelihood of South Africa’s becoming an important opera center might not be obvious to everyone. However, it begins to make sense when tracing the roles that music, storytelling, and singing have had in South African society in the past, over the past several decades, and up through today.

  It is useful at this point to focus on a few interconnected themes—singers, places, and spaces. First are the singers. While I am not offering a comprehensive list, I have chosen a small, representative group of female singers whose careers span the period (1990s to 2016), looking at how their careers got started, where they have come from (where they were born and trained), and where they have been (a trajectory of their career thus far). Next is place, broadly conceived—spaces where opera has been happening: the physical locations of opera houses, schools, and training programs as well as how some directors/producers have factored specific geographies of South Africa into their opera productions (for example, the film U-Carmen eKhayelitsha sets Bizet’s Carmen in the township of Khayelitsha). The path of one opera company (the Isango Ensemble) is of particular interest; having emerged on the scene in the first years after apartheid, the group has forged international connections with Western opera houses (primarily in London and the United States) while maintaining an investment in local township communities and South African settings for their productions.

  The First Generations of Black South African Opera: Singers

  One of the features of the post-apartheid opera scene in South Africa is that there continues to be a steady flow of white singers who are active and entering opera training programs. This history has been noted since the late nineteenth century and has fueled South African opera through the twentieth century and the end of apartheid in the 1990s. My focus here is on the entrance of the many black and mixed-race singers who are newly entering opera training programs and auditioning for productions. As we will see, most of these nonwhite singers gain entry i
nto this style of singing through the vast choral networks, primarily through township choral societies that are supplemented by choirs in schools, churches, and community organizations. The black and mixed-race singers include women and men alike, spanning the range of all male and female voice types. This inquiry centers on a few female singers, primarily because such focus provides a strong entry into the discussion of the first wave of these early, newly composed operas with female title characters, which also happen to include the first two full-length operas by black South African composers, Princess Magogo ka Dinuzulu (Mzilikazi Khumalo [2002]) and Winnie: The Opera (Bongani Ndodana-Breen [2011]). Furthermore, there are a few more women than men who are making faster progress in the upper echelons of the international opera scene (singing in major opera companies and landing recording contracts).

  The first singer I highlight has become a beacon for leading classical and jazz vocalists of the generation just ending apartheid and up through the present. Initially nurtured by her father, Khabi Mngoma, a noted music educator himself, Sibongile Khumalo (born in Soweto in Johannesburg, 1957) has enjoyed a career of remarkable breadth and accomplishment.43 Rightly heralded as “South Africa’s first lady of song,” Sibongile Khumalo has degrees from the University of Zululand, the University of the Witwatersrand, and an honorary doctorate in music from the University of Rhodes.44 Her father “was a pioneer of both the reclamation of indigenous music and the creation of new sounds. … For men like Mngoma, choral music remained a way of providing authentic forms of expression and development to African students. He saw no contradiction between conducting Handel’s Messiah, working on original, nationally conscious modern music, and explaining Zulu lyric forms to fellow enthusiast Hugh Tracey.”45 Given this history, it is not surprising that his daughter’s musical education is unusually broad and spans classical music with opera and oratorio, indigenous African traditions, and the variety of American and African jazz styles. Given her musical pedigree, it makes sense that Sibongile Khumalo was the creator of the first South African heroine in a full-length opera based on a real-life person who was also a singer, ughubu bow player, and composer, as well as important political figure: Zulu princess Constance Magogo Sibilile Mantithi Ngangezinye ka Dinuzulu (1900–1984). In 2002 Sibongile Khumalo sang the title role in the world premiere of Mzilikazi Khumalo’s Princess Magogo ka Dinuzulu at Opera Africa, based in Durban at the time.46

  Tsakane Valentine Maswanganyi (born 1979) is part of the subsequent generation of leading South African opera singers; she created the title heroine in the second major South African opera (and the first one fully composed and orchestrated) by a black South African composer. Bongani Ndodana-Breen’s Winnie: The Opera premiered at the State Theatre in Pretoria in 2011. Like Sibongile Khumalo, Maswanganyi was born in the Township of Soweto in Johannesburg. Maswanganyi’s background, unlike the broad musical education of Khumalo’s upbringing, is closer to that of the subsequent black opera singers in this early generation working today. When Maswanganyi entered the University of Pretoria, she wanted to study music, but she did not read notation.47 After a bridge course, she was able to focus on music, and by the time she was in her senior year, she sang in the opera chorus at the State Theatre in Pretoria. She continued her musical training at the Pretoria Technikon and moved on to the Roodepoort City Opera.48

  In perhaps a more fortuitous than deliberate plan, Maswanganyi became a founding member of Amici Forever, a self-described “opera band” that has produced two albums (The Opera Band [2004] and Defined [2005]). These albums have topped crossover charts, and the group has toured throughout Australia, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom. Amici Forever has been described as comprising “photogenic, classically trained opera singers who blend contemporary pop with traditional opera” who came together when they were “rehearsing and performing at opera venues around the world.”49 The four members of the group listed on their Wikipedia page come from three countries: two from England, one (Maswanganyi) from South Africa, and another from Brazil. Their repertoire consists of an assortment of classical works, contemporary easy listening music, and popular songs. Most of the arrangements on the two albums have connections to classical, and frequently operatic, works. The first album has tracks based directly on opera excerpts: the famous tenor-baritone duet “Au fond du temple Saint” from Bizet’s Pearl Fishers, Mozart’s act 1 trio from Così fan Tutte (“Soave sia il vento”), Rusulka’s best-known aria (“Song to the Moon”), and Calaf ’s aria in Turandot (“Nessun Dorma”). Additionally, there are classical works that have been adapted for opera singers, such as “Land and Freedom (“Terra e Liberta”)—based on the second movement from Beethoven’s Symphony No. 7 on Defined and the vocal version of Elgar’s “Nimrod” variation from the Enigma Variations with the “Lux Aeterna” text added (on Opera Band) and the vocal version of Barber’s “Adagio for Strings” (on Defined).50 For several tracks there are YouTube videos that include choreographed staged videos (for example, “Prayer in the Night,” Opera Band) that allow the viewer to feel more connected to the young beautiful singers.

  While it might seem easy to think of an “opera band” as catering to a less sophisticated audience or diluting the classics for mass public consumption, such dismissal feels particularly unmerited when taking a broader view of Maswanganyi’s path in opera. The tracks on both albums take sumptuously gorgeous moments in music and rearrange them for a small ensemble (four or five voices) with lush (not the original) orchestrations. The voices are classically trained and do not fudge the notes with pop-like slides or sounds of vocal strain. Those accustomed to listening to opera and classical music can be happily surprised with the sonic quality of the music. Given the popularity of their live concerts, the billboard ratings of their albums, and the plethora of superlative YouTube comments, they have a strong appeal to a wide audience—some of whom, presumably, are not familiar with classical music. Maswanganyi’s time in Amici Forever seems to have been a larger focus in the earlier part of her career. When I saw her premiere the title role in Winnie: The Opera in 2011, her voice was elegant, in strong shape, and there was nothing in her demeanor or sound that seemed at all uncomfortable on the opera stage. Her biography in the opera program mentioned her work in Amici and also listed her many operatic appearances and roles.

  I propose that Maswanganyi’s time in Amici was not just an opportunity to use her good looks and beautiful voice to earn a little money, though early in any singer’s career such gigs are welcomed. Her career exposes the reality of opera in the changing world she was part of. The South African opera culture in the early years after apartheid was readjusting from an all-white environment to something else: one that could include black, mixed-race, and Indian singers. Opera in South Africa was developing a new identity. Maswanganyi belonged to an elite, newly forming group; she was an opera singer in a new world where black South African opera singers were only just beginning to be allowed to exist. The post-apartheid law of the land required state-sponsored organizations to be racially inclusive. Yet in that first generation, opera companies were just beginning to move toward integration. Additionally, audiences were still being (and continue to be) developed and nurtured for bringing opera to a wider swath of people, particularly to include black audiences, who had been banned from opera houses during apartheid. The early part of Maswanganyi’s career illustrates the uniquely challenging landscape these first generations of black South African singers encountered. This was not the expected bumpy terrain most Western musicians and artists anticipate when starting a career within the context of grueling competition, inadequate government support, and very few slots allotted to those lucky enough to be successful. While black South African singers had had success in popular music and jazz during colonialism and apartheid, opera was creating a new narrative in the post-apartheid era. This was a case of writing oneself into history.

  The careers of Pumeza Matshikiza and Pretty Yende represent another path this first generation of black
South African opera singers have been forging, one that appears comparable to the path many black singers in the United States from the past and even into the present have been making. The similarities shared are when someone’s talent is discovered, but there are great hurdles to overcome regarding the resources needed to pursue a musical career. These artists confronted many obstacles from multiple sources. Funding and support are needed at an early stage when success is not at all guaranteed. Frequently the rudimentary training that starts ideally at very young ages is something that has been missing, so there needs to be remedial work in the fundamentals. Talent is something that only goes so far; at the highest levels of the opera world, training in languages, acting, and memorization also need to be cultivated. Finally, an important, yet frequently hidden element in career building is the support and connection one has to a nurturing community. While one’s family might provide a loving environment, the foreignness of opera and the requisite lifestyle during the training and success of a career might prove to be too great a price. One is hard pressed to “settle down” and form a typical family that involves childrearing with stable and present parenting. For this reason, opera singers (and other toplevel performing artists) from all over the world create more individualized plans for achieving professional success and personal happiness. These are not just issues for Matshikiza and Yende; they are things that Khumalo and Maswanganyi have encountered. Yet the difference is that in the first wave of this early opera generation, Khumalo and Maswanganyi were starting careers before the new post-apartheid routes began to emerge. Both of these singers started their major career in innovative ways (notably, singing in multiple repertories and more popular styles) that brought them abroad to international opera houses and back to South Africa.