by Naomi Andre
Matshikiza and Yende both have degrees from the South African College of Music (University of Cape Town), where they worked with Virginia Davids and Angelo Gobbato.51 Both went on to study in Europe and have found apprentice-like programs that have nurtured their voices and given them time to learn repertoire and the basics of the opera world. Matshikiza studied at the Royal College of Music in London in 2004 and then spent a few years in the Young Artist Programme at the Royal Opera House, where she was mentored by Dame Kiri Te Kanawa. She joined the Stuttgart Opera and has been on their roster since 2011. Her roles include Mozart’s Pamina (Magic Flute) and Susanna (Marriage of Figaro), Puccini’s Mimì (Bohème), and Bizet’s Micaela (Carmen). Her first album, Voice of Hope, came out in 2014 (Decca Records) and includes opera arias as well as traditional Xhosa songs. Her second album, Pumeza Matshikiza Arias, also Decca, came out in 2016 and focuses fully on Western art music with operatic arias and art songs.52 Yende’s path has been similar. After the University of Cape Town, she studied in the apprentice program at La Scala and was mentored by Mirella Freni. In January 2013 she made the news by filling in at the Metropolitan Opera for the role of Adele in Rossini’s Le Comte Ory, where her debut made headlines as she stumbled on the scenery during her entrance and fell, but recovered, sang beautifully, and received a strong ovation. By the end of the 2017–18 season, she will have added several other roles to her Met repertory (Pamina, Magic Flute; Rosina, Barber of Seville; Juliette, Gounod’s Roméo et Juliette; Elvira, Puritani; and the title role in Lucia di Lammermoor. Her first album, A Journey (released by Sony in September 2016), has famous show-stopping numbers by Rossini (“Una voce poco fa,” Barber of Seville), Donizetti (Lucia’s act 1 aria “Regnava nel silencio,” Lucia di Lammermoor), Bellini (act 2, “O rendeteme la speme,” I Puritani), along with other opera arias.53 Both singers are beautiful, have incredible talent, and are working their way up through European and international opera houses.
The last group of singers I will cover represent another wave of singing talent. They are a few years younger than Matshikiza and Yende and, as I write now, are still in the early stages of their careers. Like Matshikiza and Yende, three of these singers (a woman, Linda Nteleza, and two men, Thesele Kemane and Makudupanyane Senaoana) were students in the South African College of Music (University of Cape Town) and were featured in the recent documentary Ndiphilela Ukucula: I Live to Sing, directed by Julie Cohen in 2013.54 At the time of the documentary, all three were between the ages of twenty and twenty-six, which means that they were on the edges of the “born free” generation of those who grew up after the end of apartheid and are coming of age in a time that bears the legacy of apartheid but is also open to many new opportunities. The film focuses on the lives of the three singers and their preparations for a performance of Offenbach’s Les Contes Hoffmann at the Artscape Theatre in Cape Town and follows them to the United States, where they were chosen to intern and sing in a production of Kurt Weill’s Lost in the Stars at New York’s Glimmerglass Festival in August 2012. The production of Lost in the Stars featured renowned African American bass-baritone Eric Owens along with several other black singers who came together in this work based on Alan Paton’s Cry the Beloved Country. This South African novel (1948) was written about the situation in South Africa right before the apartheid system was officially put in place, and this production of the opera provided a unique opportunity for black singers from the United States and South Africa to work together on a timely subject about black-white conflict and misunderstanding, still relevant today. Documentary film director Julie Cohen brings a thoughtful and caring approach to this film. Kamal Kahn, the director of the opera program at the South African College of Music since 2009, and Julie Cohen knew each other when they were children growing up, and this connection aids Cohen in her filmmaking; she is able to garner open and warm interviews from not only the three featured singers and their families but also from Kamal Kahn, Angelo Gobbato, Virginia Davids, and several others who are central in shaping the post-apartheid opera culture in South Africa.
All the singers I have discussed represent a path of South African opera that starts with singers (mainly born in townships) who have had little access to formal musical training yet come through the choral society network and then find their way to the South African College of Music at the University of Cape Town or some other university music program for postgraduate work (Khumalo at the University of Zululand and Wits; Maswanganyi at Pretoria Technikon). Sibongile Khumalo is a bit of an outlier, since her father’s exceptional musical background helped shape her musical training. Nearly all of these singers then go abroad to help establish themselves, which also acts a bridge to a career in opera through experience, official affiliations with a Western opera house and, they hope, a recording contract with a major label. Though these singers might have early experience singing in South African opera houses (such as the Baxter Theatre and Artscape Theatres in Cape Town, Opera Africa in Durban, and Roodepoort City Opera), they seem to focus their careers abroad. As the newer generations of singers who take advantage of post-apartheid opportunities, it remains to be seen how many singers stay abroad in Europe and the United States and how many return and are able to sustain a top-level career in South Africa.
South African Places and Spaces
There is another model of opera training, singing, and performing that is also based in Cape Town but provides a different, parallel route to the models described above. Before, during, or after a singer has experience with a formal music school program, there is an opera company that nurtures young talent in the townships. On its website, the Isango Ensemble describes itself as “a South African theatre company that draws its artists mainly from the townships surrounding Cape Town. … Our company’s structure embraces artists at all stages of their creative development allowing senior artists to lead and contribute towards the growth of rising talents.” After outlining their international awards and travel, they describe their productions that “re-imagine classics from the Western theatre canon, finding a new context for the stories within a South African or township setting thereby creating inventive work relevant to the heritage of the nation.”55
The Isango Ensemble started out as Dimpho di Kopane (Sotho for “combined talents”) and was founded in 2000 by Mark Dornford-May and Charles Hazlewood, two artistic directors at London’s Broomhill Opera. The early history of this opera company is featured in the documentary Township Opera, which outlines their auditioning process and showcases two of their productions (Yiimimangaliso: The Mysteries and U-Carmen) that were performed at Stellenbosch (as part of Spier festival) and then taken on a very successful tour in London (initially five weeks, extended to nine).56 In this documentary we learn that Pauline Malefane started out in the chorus but was soon offered the title role in U-Carmen when the original leading singer backed out. Malefane was a huge success in the production; moreover, she eventually married Dornford-May and became one of the leading singers in the company as well as part of the company’s administrative team.
Dimpho di Kopane went on to make their New York debut October 27–November 28, 2004, with a series of four works in twenty-five performances over a five-week period at Synod Hall in the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York City. Rounding out the program of the Yiimimangaliso: The Mysteries (based on twelfth-century liturgical dramas translated in Xhosa) and the Xhosa setting of Bizet’s Carmen, there was Ibali Ioo Tsoti: The Beggar’s Opera (an adaptation of the 1728 John Gay satirical operetta) and IKumkanikazi yeKhephu: The Snow Queen (a reinterpreted version of Hans Christian Andersen’s story set in South Africa and featuring traditional Xhosa music and ceremonies).57
Dimpho di Kopane changed names around 2006, when it became the Isango/Portobello opera company, under the management of Mark Dornford-May and Pauline Malefane. Isango has the meaning in Xhosa and Zulu as “gateway” or “port.” The company came into an arrangement with the District Six Museum Homecoming Centre and developed a th
eater in the former old Sacks Futeran building, called The Fugard Theatre, in 2010.58 Unfortunately, the company had to leave The Fugard due to financial difficulties. Since 2011 the opera company has been known as the Isango Ensemble. On the homepage of their website they trace their history back to 2000 and outline the guiding vision for the productions:
From the beginning the company has drawn its performers from the previously disadvantaged townships surrounding the city. Isango creates performances with a strong South African flavor by re-imagining Western theatre classics within a South African or township setting and by creating new work reflecting South African heritage.59
In the early days of Dimpho di Kopane, the U-Carmen live stage production started out in French (the original language of Bizet’s opera Carmen) and was then translated into Xhosa. The cast at that point had both black and white singers, and the setting of the production had not yet been moved to Khayelitsha. With the great popularity of Bizet’s Carmen in Xhosa, as well as the Xhosa setting for the medieval Mystery plays (Yiimimangaliso: The Mysteries), the evolution of shows that were adapted to the townships clearly illustrates the company’s stated mission on their website of “re-imagining Western theatre classics” and “creating new works reflecting South African heritage.” U-Carmen became the filmed version U-Carmen eKhayelitsha in 2005 and was not only incredibly popular in Khayelitsha but also went on to do well at film festivals, winning the Golden Bear for “Best Film” in the Berlin Film Festival and two Golden Thumb awards for direction (Mark Dornford-May) and performance (Pauline Malefane) from Roger Ebert’s Film Festival.
One of their most popular productions is a Xhosa version of Mozart’s Magic Flute: Impempe Yomlingo that scores the Western opera orchestra for marimba, drums, and township percussion, premiering in 2007 at the Baxter Theatre in Cape Town. It then went on to London and Dublin, returned to South Africa in Johannesburg (at the Market Theatre), and then later had a tour to Tokyo that ended in Singapore in 2009. Other Isango Ensemble productions include repertory operas that are given new settings, La Bohème: Abanxaxhi (in a live stage version [2012]), which has been made into a filmed version, Breathe Umphefumlo (directed by Mark Dornford-May [2015]) that updates the action to the present time with the characters in Khayelitsha ironically fighting tuberculosis (ironically, since TB, “consumption,” was the disease for Puccini’s Mimì in 1896 and is—sadly—still an issue in parts of the world, including Khayelitsha). Other shows listed in the Isango Ensemble repertoire include musical settings of Aesop’s Fables (with music, singing, and dance), an adaptation of Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol, Ikrismas Kherol, where Scrooge is a stingy business woman who is visited by three Ancestral Spirits, and a new setting of Robert Tressell’s socialist novel that was influenced by his time in South Africa (Cape Town and Johannesburg) during the 1890s, The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists: Izigwili Ezidlakazelayo. In 2012 they partnered with the Globe Theatre in London and co-produced a musical version of Shakespeare’s epic poem, Venus and Adonis; the work opened the Globe to Globe Festival that April. The 2016–17 schedule included a joint production between the Isango Ensemble, the Young Vic in London, and the Royal Opera House at Covent Garden with an opera based on South African author (and Oxford professor) Jonny Steinberg’s novel, A Man of Good Hope (2015). This show also appeared at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in February 2017.
The Isango Ensemble has been bold and thoughtful about promoting black South African singers in opera after apartheid. They present a new model of how to perform opera in a way that brings together the opulent Western art music legacy with new surroundings. They achieve that almost impossible combination of making something universal by bringing in the utterly specific. The Isango Ensemble is showing us how opera from the past—Carmen, La Bohème, The Magic Flute—can become newly relevant. Additionally, their new ventures with Steinberg’s recent novel about a Somali refugee who has traveled down the eastern African coast to find a livelihood in South Africa show an engagement with stories that have roots in the present as well as the past. Through their work with the local people in the Cape Town area who love to sing and the connections to international tours and co-productions with Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre, the Young Vic, and the Royal Opera House, the Isango Ensemble articulates a salient portion of the new opera scene in South Africa after apartheid.
In a 2010 article Mark Dornford-May wrote before the Isango Ensemble had to leave their space at The Fugard Theatre in the District 6 Museum Homecoming Centre, he outlined a thorny issue around building audiences in the new South Africa. He opened the article with a question:
“How come the audience is so white?” is perhaps the most frequently asked question by visitors from abroad to our theatre. It is a complex and difficult one to answer and to be honest I know I blush with embarrassment at our continued failure. It is no comfort at all to me but it is not just at The Fugard that this “whiteness” is: I am afraid to say the same is true of every theatre in this city and nearly every restaurant and cinema.60
The integrating of audiences is something that the United States has also struggled with. While there are different issues for the nonwhite audiences in Cape Town and in most United States theatrical venues, there are also important similarities. Dornford-May talks about the difficulty of finding transportation that gets back to the townships after 10 P.M. and the short-term goals to get financial sponsorship for shuttles as well as the longer-term goal of “a proper bus/transport plan.”61 Though not an issue in every U.S. city, such logistical issues are still problematic when trying to recruit audiences who live far from theaters and are cut off from certain parts of town after hours due to the lack of public transportation. Another challenge Dornford-May alludes to is the energy needed to attract new audiences to events that have been considered off limits, whether “officially” through apartheid or Jim Crow laws or through internalized cultural biases that the arts (and especially the “elitist” art of opera) are not meant for, or welcoming to, nonwhite audiences. Even when there are black and other nonwhite singers in the show—such attitudes need to be actively overcome.
Through the use of language—translating European languages into Xhosa—in the opera and the placement of stories in South Africa’s township settings, the Isango Ensemble is doing a lot to bridge the connection between black South African audiences and the productions. The other South African opera houses, such as the Artscape and Baxter Theatres in Cape Town or the Black Tie Ensemble and Gauteng Opera in Johannesburg, are also reaching out to nurture young singers through apprentice programs and to feature works that combine the standard Western European opera canon with newer works by indigenous composers.
The presence of black composers, singers, and interracial collaborations that feature subjects about black history in American opera is a narrative that has been primarily played out alongside the mainstream opera tradition, albeit frequently obscured in the margins. I have traced this story back to the nineteenth century, and scholars are beginning to find evidence of this tradition in archives, newspapers, opera house records, and recovered materials from private collections. A new chapter emerging in the United States has a connection to the adapted and newer productions seen in South Africa in a related musical-theater arena through the use of spoken word and hip hop.
The most dazzling example is in Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Hamilton (2015), a story of the establishment of the United States wherein the founding fathers (George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton, and others) are all portrayed by black and Latino performers. “In this telling, rap is the language of revolution; hip hop is the backbeat. In each brilliantly crafted song, we hear the debates that shaped our nation and we hear the debates that are still shaping our nation.” These are the words President Barack Obama said to introduce a performance of Hamilton—the blockbuster musical that was then playing on Broadway—at the White House for Washington, D.C.–area high school students on March 16, 2016.62 In these opening comments, the pr
esident linked this presentation of the story behind Hamilton with the reality of how this work has meaning today.
President Obama is among the many people who understood that the wild success of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Hamilton was due to its tapping into something other than being an evening of entertainment that provides a getaway from life’s regular events. “The show reminds us that this nation was built by more than just a few great men; it is an inheritance that belongs to all of us, and that’s why Michelle and I wanted to bring this performance to the White House. Because Hamilton is not just for people who can score a ticket to a pricey Broadway show, it is a story for all of us and about all of us.”63 Audiences have been drawn in because this work says something relevant and pressing about that present time: who matters, who gets to have a voice, and who can make a country great. Hamilton has brought us a history of the United States that goes back to the eighteenth century and that, now more than ever, has resonance.
As an area for future inquiry, the success of Hamilton seems to build on the currents happening on formal concert stages and opera houses. Both in opera in the United States and South Africa the relevant themes emerging engage how histories are told and who gets to tell them. These works demonstrate that there are audiences who are eager to see their nation, including wider representations of themselves.
3Haunted Legacies
Interracial Secrets
From the Diary of Sally Hemings
The Sally Hemings and Thomas Jefferson relationship is an “American” story. Through the imperatives of slavery, their relationship was shaped by an alchemy of economic and societal pressures as Jefferson became one of the leaders of a new democracy that depended on capitalistic gain. Concurrently, he needed the financial structure of slavery to build his expansive estate of Monticello; Jefferson was a landowner who governed a large community of men, women, and children in bondage. In the public spotlight, he was the third president of the United States, a leading statesman for a country he helped create, and for which he became a devoted public servant. His private life was shrouded in shadows where his role as master encompassed his relationship with Sally Hemings, a woman he owned as property and the mother of most of his children. Written into the fabric of the early history of the United States is a particular double narrative about how power is unequally experienced according to gender and race.