April 2014

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Apr i l 2014

Opera21

magazine April 2014: Race and Ethnicity in Opera Editor-­in-­chief Jennifer Choi operaswag.wordpress.com Editor Kim Feltkamp kimberlyfeltkamp.com Contact Opera21 opera-­‐21.com Email: contact@opera-­‐21.com

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O21 Table of Contents

Volume 2 | No. 2

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The Gypsy ‘Other’ in Opera Ilana Walder-Biesanz

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Madame Butterfly and Ethnicity: Failure of Cultural Cohesion Gregory Moomjy

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New Bass in Town: Interview with Soloman Howard Jennifer Choi

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A Brief Survey of Opera and Black Identity Adam Matlock

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Is it Just Make-up or is it Bigotry?

Lawrence Axelrod

The Gypsy ‘Other’ in Opera

By Ilana Walder-Biesanz From Carmen twirling her skirts and tossing flowers to Azucena’s horrible revenge, portrayals of gypsies appear often in opera.

These representations are built on stereotypes rather than reality, but the reality is not so easy to define. Because gypsies are a geographically scattered ethnic group with various languages and no written historical tradition, even purportedly anthropological accounts are based on outsiders’ observations.

These frequently conflict and are inevitably romanticized. The anthropologist of the nineteenth century (when gypsy studies became popular) looked for (and sometimes even invents) differences that would delight his readers. Following the literary currents of Romanticism, he rejected industrialism and searched for the exotic in ‘primitive’ preindustrial cultures. As a result, the gypsies of both pseudoscience and fiction are mysterious, potentially alluring, and always dangerous ‘Others’ who defy the norms of the West and its civilizing influence.

The idea of the 'Other' has its origins in Hegel’s dialectics but was popularized by Edward Said in his book Orientalism. The ‘Other’ is something outside of one’s own self or society, but the choice of ‘Other’ also defines the self or society that excludes it.

Beauvoir famously analyzed how men construct women as the ‘Other’; Said discusses the West’s construction of the Orient as its inferior-but-romantic ‘Other’.

Gypsies seem to fit this model: They are originally from India, and when they first appeared in Europe, they were initially identified with Islam and Turkey. As in most

cases of Orientalism, they are vilified but also sexualized—women in particular are portrayed as sexually available. This may be because the popularity of ‘Orientals’ and gypsies surged during the Victorian era, when society defined its own prudish sexual culture in contrast to an imagined East full of whores and harems.

The Spanish gypsy appears particularly often in works of literature and their operatic adaptations. Spain, with its long history of Arabic and Jewish inhabitants and its proximity to Africa, was often constructed as the ‘Other’ within Europe: the most accessible province of primitive exoticism. Andalusia, Spain, and gypsies were and still are conflated in popular imagination, rolled together in the vision of a dark-haired woman with a shawl and a fan, dancing and telling fortunes. (In a trip to southern Spain, it is easy to find modern tourists flocking to reconstructions of this image, which are entertaining and lucrative but perpetuate false stereotypes of bygone centuries.) On both the page and the stage, Carmen is the embodiment of this allsinging, all-dancing, generically ‘Oriental’ type; in fact, the narrator in Mérimée’s novel muses about whether she is Andalusian, Moorish, or Jewish until she tells him she is a gypsy. Of course, the conglomeration of various ‘Others’ that is the fictional Spanish gypsy poses a greater threat than mere seduction: Anti-Jewish libel combined with myths about gypsy rituals historically led to both serious and literary allegations of babysnatching, as in Il trovatore.

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Opera composers employ various musical techniques to signal the ‘Otherness’ of gypsy characters or their ‘Oriental’ settings. These ‘Oriental’ elements are usually not actually aspects of Eastern music, but rather signifiers that Western tradition has, over time, come to associate with Eastern exoticism. For Carmen, Bizet appropriated motifs from existing operas set in southern Spain, as well as using recognizably ‘Spanish’ rhythms that were popular in French night life of the day. (In the case of the famous habanera, the original song Bizet adapted was actually Cuban, so ‘Spanish’ was apparently a loose category to both the composer and his audience.) Verdi is more subtle with his musical choices in Il trovatore, but he still highlights his characters’ gypsy characteristics. Both the gypsy anvil chorus and Azucena’s ‘stride la vampa’ are heavily rhythmic (in the former case, with the rhythms famously punctuated by the striking of anvils) and dance-like (with the later taking the form of a fast waltz despite its dark content). Like Carmen, Verdi’s gypsies seem to have a wildness and need for motion that the more lyric, Western characters lack.

in entrusted with her, but she seduces him into letting her escape. He is jailed for his negligence, but spends his time in prison dreaming of Carmen (who has promised him a rendezvous) and looking at the ‘enchanted’ flower she threw at him. Upon his release, he finds Carmen and reluctantly joins her band of gypsy smugglers. The life suits him badly, and he is constantly jealous of Carmen’s flirtations with other men. Eventually, he goes to visit his dying mother and Carmen begins a relationship with a dashing bullfighter.

Don José, desperate, confronts her outside a bullfight and demands that she return to him. When she refuses, he stabs her and is condemned to death for his crime.

Bizet’s opera also includes a character not in the novel: Micaëla, a sweet and virginal girl from Don José’s hometown in the north of Spain (i.e., the more European part of it). She provides a contrast to Carmen’s exoticism and sexual availability. Don José should marry Micaëla: Carmen’s ‘Oriental’ seductions may be more immediately appealing, but to actually fall in love with her and abandon the path of bourgeois honour spells doom.

A brief overview of some of opera’s most prominent gypsies: •

Bizet’s Carmen (1875): Undoubtedly, the most famous gypsy in opera, the title character of Carmen (based on Mérimée novel of the same name) is portrayed as an alluring but dangerous seductress. A worker in a Spanish cigar-rolling factory and a favorite of the local men, she gets in a fight with a fellow worker and is arrested. Don José, a soldier from the north of Spain,

•

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Verdi’s Il trovatore (1853): Set in Spain and based on Guiterréz’s play El trovador, Il trovatore features a complicated plot catalyzed by a gypsy woman’s child-snatching. Many years before the beginning of the opera, Azucena’s mother was wrongly

accused of bewitching a child of the noble di Luna family and was burned at the stake. Azucena, in revenge, abducted the di Luna child and threw it in a fire. However, as we later learn, she made a mistake—she actually threw her own child into the fire and kept the abducted baby, raising him as her son Manrico. In the end, after much romance and warfare, the Conte di Luna has Manrico executed, and Azucena, on the verge of death, triumphantly announces that he has killed his own brother and that her revenge against the di Lunas is complete.

seems to provide a post facto justification for the persecution of her mother and of the gypsy population in general.

•

Baby-snatching has long been associated with gypsies—the German Reichstag accused them of it in the 1400s—and the stereotype persists to this day. (A gypsy couple arrested in 2013 for kidnapping—which proved to be simply an unofficial adoption— prompted media quotes that the ‘babytrade conducted by gypsies between Romania, Bulgaria, Greece and England’ is ‘well known.’) The legends are inconsistent and unsubstantiated, but they have fueled centuries of racial persecution, with unexplained child murders and abductions often attributed to the nearest band of gypsies. Azucena represents a different aspect of the gypsy ‘Other’ than Carmen—overtly rather than subtly threatening, she attacks Western civilization by stealing its defenseless children. Her crime’s connection with racial stereotypes

Strauss’s The Gypsy Baron (1885): This operetta is by J. Strauss, so, as you might expect, it’s a good deal lighter than Verdi or Bizet. Most of the characters are gypsies (in the Ottoman Empire rather than Spain, for a change), and the opera relates how they get romantically paired off. In the process, a hidden treasure is found, a gypsy girl is revealed to secretly be a Turkish princess, and all of the leading men go to war and win titles of nobility. While one gypsy, Czipra, tells fortunes that come true, the fact that the characters are gypsies is for the most part incidental to the plot.

Less famously, gypsies make appearances in Verdi’s La forza del destino (1862), Donzietti’s La zingara (1822), Menotti’s The Medium (1946), Offenbach’s Barbebleu (1866), Rossini’s Il Turco in Italia (1814), Klámán’s Countess Mariza (1924), Herbert’s The Fortune Teller (1898), Thomas’s Mignon (1866), Balfe’s The Bohemian Girl (1843), Leoncavallo’s Zazà (1900) and Gli zingari (1912), and many more operas and operettas from the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The gypsy characters are almost all female—doubly the ‘Other’ because of both gender and ethnicity.

Though the reality of historical gypsy life is poorly documented, the Western constructions of the gypsy ‘Other’ that appear in opera are certainly more stereotype than

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truth, drawing on conventional signifiers, legends, and a muddled and generic sense of the ‘Orient’ in both their plots and music.

That’s not to say that these aren’t great operas worthy of performance—theatre and opera are full of classic works with racism or sexism that remain relevant and compelling nonetheless. However, we should be careful as

audience members not to form our ideas of gypsy character and culture (in the past or present) based on these fictions. It would also be intriguing to see directors engage more directly with the ethnic issues present in these works, as theatre directors have played with and subverted problematic texts like Othello and Taming of the Shrew.

Further reading • On the othering of women: Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex • On the othering of the East: Edward Said, Orientalism • On gypsies and the myths and literature surrounding them: Lou Charnon-Deutch, The Spanish Gypsy: The History of a European Obsession • On Orientalism with respect to Spain and Carmen in particular: José Colmelro, ‘Exorcising Exoticism: “Carmen” and the Construction of Oriental Spain’ in Comparative Literature 55.2 (2002)

Ilana Walder-Biesanz is an engineer, actress, and mezzo-soprano. She recently graduated from Olin College with a degree in systems engineering, and is currently pursuing a graduate degree in European Literature at the University of Cambridge on a Gates-Cambridge fellowship. She tweets about opera (and occasionally other topics) as @ilana_wb.

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Madame Butterfly and Ethnicity: Failure of Cultural Cohesion

By Gregory Moomjy wanted to modernize and move the country forward while at the same time holding onto their ancestral customs. Consequently, they were neither fully Western nor fully Eastern.

Cio-Cio San, the leading lady of Madama Butterfly, is a member of this generation and the struggles of her generation are dramatized through her marriage to an American naval officer. Her marriage causes her family to disown her (at the behest of her uncle, a Buddhist priest). But her willingness to be faithful to her husband at all costs leads to her death. Puccini sets this drama to music that goes far beyond late Romantic Italian lyricism. He employs a series of leitmotifs, which emphasize cultural differences, most notably the beginning of “The Star-Spangled Banner” which opens Pinkerton’s aria, “Dovunque al Mundo.” The orchestra plays the same phrase towards the end of the aria to accompany Pinkerton’s shout of “America forever,” sung in English to emphasize the cultural discrepancies. Butterfly’s music for the beginning of Act I marks her squarely as Japanese. The phrase that accompanies her suicide makes its first appearance when Pinkerton catches a glimpse of the knife, which Butterfly’s father used to kill himself.

The fact that her father took his own life, by order of the Emperor, shows that he is subservient to the ideals of duty, honor, and self-sacrifice. These are the traditions which are deeply embedded in Japanese society.

Other markers of Butterfly’s ethnicity appear successively from her Act I entrance to

As opera lovers, we are very familiar with Butterfly’s suicide from Puccini’s Madama Butterfly. We realize that after having remained constant to her philandering husband, she puts their son in his care and, with nothing left for her, kills herself using the traditional Japanese method of seppuku.

Presumably this is because she is still in love with Pinkerton and wants to die honorably. At first glance, this makes sense. Puccini is an unabashedly sentimental composer who wrote such romantic works as La Bohème and Tosca, and what could be more romantic than a young woman giving her life for the man she loves, even if he no longer loves her?

However, on closer inspection, we realize that the reasons behind Madama Butterfly’s iconic ending go far beyond romantic ideals. Rather, Butterfly’s suicide is a commentary on race relations, rooted in politics contemporary to Puccini’s Japan.

In an essay by Domingo de Mascarenhas in the anthology Art and Ideology in European Opera, the author ties Madama Butterfly’s composition and subsequent revisions to a momentous event in Japanese history: the Russo-Japanese war. By the end of this war, Japan had defeated Tsarist Russia.

The Eastern country’s defeat of a Western power was cause for celebration in Japan. For them, it signified their foothold in a global stage dominated by Western powers.

However, from a social perspective, the generation of young Japanese people living in the early 20th century faced a dilemma. They

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her abandonment by her family. These extend not only to musical devices in the score, but to directions in the libretto as well. For instance, one of the first things she does is leading her family in a group bow. This action is repeated at the close of the marriage ceremony. In musical terms, this section includes the phrase, which underlines her explanation to Pinkerton that, in Japan, everyone claims to be rich even if they are not. This phrase appears again in Act II when she refuses Prince Yamadori’s hand. When interpreted by the right performer, such as Renata Scotto, this phrase can be a marker of Butterfly’s disdain for Japan’s cultural mores.

In Act II, while Pinkerton is safely in America, Butterfly attempts to adopt his music. “The Star-Spangled Banner” inflects her vocal lines, emphasizing her obstinacy to submit to Japanese cultural norms even though everyone else can clearly see that her husband has abandoned her. She insists that she is not Japanese, but American, and therefore should only practice American customs. Yet even in her staunch xenophilia, she is still almost heartbreakingly Japanese.

When she mimes an American divorce proceeding, her naivety almost makes the scene cartoonish. When Sharpless, the marriage broker, arrives to attempt to break the news of Pinkerton’s second marriage , she not only asks him how his ancestors are, but she asks him if the robins make their nest in America before or after they nest in Japan.

The reason for this is quite simple: Pinkerton said he would be back when the robins nest.

Three years later, he still hasn’t returned.

Even big arias like “Un Bel Di Vedremo,” which first emphasize Butterfly’s naïve faith in romantic principles, serve to heighten the cultural divide. The orchestra replays the melody at the appearance of Pinkerton’s ship, the Abraham Lincoln, in the harbor. At first, this might seem like a simple indication that all of Butterfly’s romantic fantasies are, at least for the moment, fulfilled. However, the aria’s theme soon gives way to “The StarSpangled Banner,” which in turn leads to a climactic affirmation in the text that Pinkerton has come back for her. Everyone who told her otherwise was wrong. The mere fact of the aforementioned musical progression ties Butterfly’s idealistic view of marriage to her idealistic view of the United States. This is contrasted with the extreme Japanese exoticism of her previous aria, also in the second act, where she describes the horrors of the geisha life and how she would rather die than return to it.

Madama Butterfly is more than a story of a failed relationship that just so happens to involve two people from two distinct cultural backgrounds. Pinkerton and Butterfly symbolize their respective cultures as a whole.

Consequently, Pinkerton’s philandering and Butterfly’s suicide represent the uneasy nature of East-West relations in the early 20th century. Butterfly’s death is caused not by her broken heart, but rather because there is nothing left for her. So rather than live as an outsider in her own country, she dies. The true tragedy of Madama Butterfly is not the death of a love-struck teenager, but the failure of cultural cohesion.

Gregory Moomjy is a Musicologist who graduated from Fordham University. He has contributed to several music publications including BBC Music Magazine. He has written program notes for Gotham Chamber Opera. He is studying for his Masters at Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.

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New Bass in Town: Interview with Soloman Howard

By Jennifer Choi

Last month, I attended a performance of Der Rosenkavalier at The Kennedy Center in Washington D.C. I had bought the tickets because Renée Fleming was singing the Marschallin, and while her Marschallin lived up to all of the hype, I remember being particularly impressed by the exceptional talent of the young supporting singers.

Soloman Howard sang the role of the notary and the police inspector that night, and he dazzled the audience with his commanding voice and stage presence. After being accepted into the Domingo Cafritz Young Artists Program in 2010, Howard has been taking the opera world by storm.

First introduced to classical music as a freshman in high school, Howard attended

Morgan State University in Baltimore, where he had the opportunity to travel the world with Morgan State’s Choir and perform in some of the best performance halls with world-class singers. He has been a part of the DomingoCafritz Young Artist Program for a couple of years now, but he says he is still fairly new to opera. He didn’t being pursuing a career as a soloist or start learning opera repertoire until he began his graduate studies at the Manhattan School of Music in 2008, and six years later, he still feels like a newbie at times.

Howard’s journey to the young artists program is, put simply, unique. Originally from the DC area, Howard graduated from the Manhattan School of Music in the spring of 2010, and he came down to Washington D.C.

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to audition for the Washington National Opera chorus. The slots for the Young Artist Program had already been filled for the year, and he was hoping the chorus audition would be a good source of feedback as he prepared to audition for young artists programs the following year. Little did he know that his journey would move much more quickly than he expected. Blown away by his audition, the chorus master and artistic planner asked him to come back a couple of months later to audition for the artistic director, Christina Scheppelmann. “The very next day, I had to audition for Maestro Domingo at the Kennedy Center. He pretty much created a slot for me, and that is how I got into the program. It was crazy. I always tell my friends, you never know where your opportunities are going to come from, so always be ready.”

Howard’s story is not what one would normally expect from someone entering into a young artist program in America. He grew up in an inner city neighborhood not far from The Kennedy Center. With articles titled, “I Could Have Been a Great Opera Singer, If I Were Rich,” circulating the opera blogosphere, Howard has proven that the circumstances into which one is born does not define the outcome of success, even in opera, which is sometimes labeled a silver spoon profession.

Having to deal with homelessness and sometimes not knowing where the next meal was going to come from, Howard says his childhood experiences distilled in him a toughness that gives him the strength to keep pursuing his dreams. “It’s the mindset. It gives me an extra sense of strength and fortitude, that I can press past any situation because of how I grew up. Some things you may never achieve, but at least knowing that

even if you are afraid of something, you’re going to challenge the fear. That’s what growing up as an underprivileged, inner city youth has taught me – to never give up. I came literally from nothing. My childhood experiences have given me the drive to fight for what I knew I deserved, no matter what I looked like, no matter whether I was a light skinned black guy or dark skinned black guy.

I was going to make sure I showed up ready, prepared every time I walked in the door.

And given where I am today and where I am headed, I can’t justify saying I didn’t try.”

While he personally hasn’t faced racial discrimination while pursuing a career in opera, it is clear that his racial background has influenced his attitude towards his work. “I have some family members who did experience discrimination because of race.

That has made me more aware of the possibility. Say I show up and I’m not as prepared as the next guy. People may not be as compassionate or be as willing to work with me. They may not give me a second chance. It’s been said that people are always looking for the opportunity to not use us blacks. I haven’t personally gone through that, and I hope it’s something I never have to experience. But being black, I am aware of what is happening in our country, the climate of our country, and I’m aware of my history. I know that I need to make sure I show up and don’t give anyone any excuse to say, ‘It’s because he’s black.’ I never want to hear that.

I just want to hear, ‘This guy is talented and ready to perform, so we can trust him.’”

Howard recognizes, however, that his situation may not be the norm for other African-Americans who are pursuing a career in opera. He is a bass, a fach where the

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demand far surpasses the supply. “There are people who still aren’t able to look past complexion and look for the soul or for the voice. I have some friends who feel like they don’t get the same opportunities as other singers do get because of their ethnicity.”

Race is a problem that plagues the opera industry, with singers being pushed to do roles that are beyond their vocal ability merely because of the color of their skin. In an ideal world, people should be hired based on talent and vocal ability. “I’m hired to play Italian characters and people other cultures. I’m not Italian. I don’t look like what the librettist would have wanted for the Italian character.

But because I have the voice, I can do the job.” Howard also says that many singers are afraid of typecasting, worried that once they sing in an opera like Porgy and Bess, those roles will be the only ones offered them. But singers like Lawrence Brownlee are making headway in America, Howard says.

In addition to problematic casting issues, blackface is a large thorn in the side of what some people feel is an art form that can’t seem to get with the times. While most other theatrical forms have abandoned blackface, condemning its use as racist, major opera houses all over the world still use it, with some notable exceptions. During one of the panels for The American Voices Festival, which took place at The Kennedy Center last fall, Anthony Freud, the general director of the Lyric Opera of Chicago, said, “Racial prejudice is utterly indefensible, in whatever form it takes, and we as opera companies either believe that or we don’t.” The Lyric included Otello as part of its 2013-2014 season, and the leadership intentionally decided not to use blackface in the production.

Soloman Howard as Muhammad Ali in 'Approaching Ali' (Scott Suchman)

Howard questions the intention behind the use of blackface in opera. “If you want to specifically portray a black character, there are enough talented black people to fill the roles. When blackface is done, the question of intent comes to mind. If you do it to avoid working with black people or if you’re trying to mimic or ridicule, then it is wrong.”

The weekend following our conversation, Howard was scheduled to sing at an event at the Constitution Hall celebrating Marian

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Anderson’s 75th anniversary of performing at the Lincoln Memorial. “She was denied to opportunity to perform there originally because of her skin. Marian Anderson once said, ‘As long as you keep a person down, some part of you has to be down there to hold the person down.’ Most of the time, you know when you’re doing something to harm someone. You should never do something purposely to offend.”

Many houses will use the authenticity of the story as a reason for not casting African Americans in certain roles or for using blackface, which is a flimsy excuse in the modern age of regietheater. Howard says that authenticity is just an excuse not to use certain people. “Most operas are works of fiction that were made up for entertainment. Unless the opera was written specifically to cast only black singers, such as Porgy & Bess, or written about a real life person, anyone who says that is just making an excuse. For example, I did a Muhammad Ali opera.

Muhammad Ali is a real life person, so it would have to be cast with an African American singer, or in that case, someone would have to be in black face.”

Howard emphasizes the importance of telling the story of African Americans. “Some directors, or artistic directors, at opera companies do not consider works like Porgy and Bess and Showboat as serious opera.

Was Gershwin not serious when he wrote his music? Works like Showboat and Porgy and Bess tell the history of our people. Did you know that the banjo was originally a black

instrument? There is an exhibit at the Baltimore Industrial Museum called ‘The History of the Banjo.’ All of the bluegrass and white country singers sat with black musicians and learned how to play these instruments. Sometimes, blacks create something, and then there are some people who think that they are above that, so we throw it away. I’ve had black professors tell me, ‘I hope you’re not singing a bunch of spirituals.’ But it’s the music of our people and it tells the story of where we came from. I don’t know many Jewish people who are going to tell you not to tell their story. They have a Holocaust Museum. We’re not proud of the struggle, but we are proud of the fact that this is where we were, and this is where we are now. You can’t know where you’re going if you don’t know where you come from. There is no reason for us to fight when we don’t know what we didn’t have and what we could lose at any moment.”

“I think it’s very important to tell our story, and it should continue to be told until race is no longer an issue, until we can get over the fact that there is no race and that we are all human, that nature gave us different skins based upon the climates we live in.

Race is still is an issue, and we do need to move past it.”

Howard will have a busy season next year.

He will be making his Metropolitan Opera debut in the upcoming season, singing the role of the king in Aida. He will also be singing the role of Doctor Grenvil in La Traviata at LA Opera.

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A Brief Survey of Opera and Black Identity

By Adam Matlock Opera has never had an easy relationship with race. The canon is full of White and Western centered stories about non-White, non-Western themes and characters, and the result is often ridden with stereotypes, problematic tropes, and clumsy musical imitation of the culture of choice. As opera has modernized, seeing contributions from composers and librettists of color as well as diverse casts and production staff, the expectations created by this problematic history has often been left on the shoulders of creators of color, unfairly influencing expectations of their work, and if or how their identity will play into their work. Black American composers must also reconcile with Jazz and Blues, or those genres’ folk predecessors, or risk having their authenticity questioned. In this article I use the term Black American as opposed to the more accepted term African American. I do so for two reasons; first, as a way of acknowledging the unique fluidity of the identity of the African diaspora in North America under chattel slavery and after it; and second to acknowledge how that experience has informed the aesthetic and thematic fluidity of music by Black Americans in a way that is visible across style and genre lines. This fluidity, and the challenge it creates in categorizing Black American music by its participants and observers alike, often results in questions of authenticity coming from within and without. By examining three operas written by Black American composers - Treemonisha, by Scott Joplin, X: The Life

and Times of Malcolm X by Anthony Davis, and Trillium E by Anthony Braxton - I will examine how those questions of authenticity are often negated, if not in easily identifiable musical connections, then in thematic strategies that pepper both the musical and narrative elements of these works.

Scott Joplin is in a unique position of the three composers discussed, as hone of the first major figures in Black American composition.

His primary outlet, piano rags, are a distinct part of the tapestry of Black American folk music. Yet he saw himself as trying to elevate or sophisticate the unrefined tradition of rag, incorporating classical forms and harmonies into the existing formula. His opera, Treemonisha, is almost a narrative mirror -the titular protagonist, a black woman, is out to save her people from superstitious folk beliefs through the gift of education. This theme, of black people saving themselves from themselves, is a common one in early 20th century Black expression, epitomized by W.E.B. Dubois’ essay “The Talented Tenth.”

It’s a somewhat uncomfortable position, one that contemporary Black scholarship has often eschewed, and yet is recognizably a “Black theme.”

Thematically, the opera has a lot of recognizable motifs from Black folk storytelling - several characters are conjurers, and aspects of the plot mimic elements of Br’er Rabbit tales. But Joplin brings these aspects up as a means of dismissing them, and it makes the opera a conflicting listen.

Musically, Joplin was an expert not only at

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rendering ragtime elements into the opera, but other Black folk forms as well, filtering them through a fairly strict musical theater structure. The music is competent, if not especially innovative to a modern listener, and as the work was left as a piano score upon Joplin’s death, there are several available orchestrations of the work recorded. Gunther Schuller completed the piece for full chamber orchestra which, despite Schuller’s affinity for and championship of Black American music, seems most at home with the grandest of the grand-opera-like segments of the work. There is a more recent orchestration for a 12-person ensemble closely resembling the working ragtime pit bands of Joplin’s day, with string quartet plus double bass, trap kit, and 5 horn players on flute, cornet, clarinet and trombone, completed by Rick Benjamin, which makes the music feel a bit more vital, and handles the syncopation with much more agility. No version I’ve heard, however, has been able to help the work’s musical acuity reconcile with its themes - the nostalgia present in some of the music seems especially at odds with the sense of judgment coming from the clumsy libretto. There’s also the question of Joplin’s use of ragtime elements in the opera - its only pure ragtime sequences are dance sequences to provide a sort of illustrative account of blackness, with a slightly disparaging feel to these particular uses. But taken on its own merits, the score is enjoyable and well crafted, drawing equally well from all its sources.

There are no questions as to the thematic Blackness of Anthony Davis’ X: The Life and Times of Malcolm X. Drawing from the dramatic potential inherent in the development of one of the most important figures in Black

American history and politics, the work takes the opportunity to meditate on many broader themes through a black framework, specifically masculinity and influence which appear frequently in the libretto. In the work, two characters which have a major influence on Malcolm’s development (the hustler Street and the Nation of Islam leader Elijah Muhammed) are sung by the same tenor, given similar breathtaking vocal writing that demonstrates the nature of their influence on Malcolm at the point - yet the impact of this decision would be substantially diminished if the opera hadn’t focused a majority of its first scene on the death of Reverend Earl Little, an activist and Malcolm’s father, at the hands of a white vigilante group, and the effect this has on young Malcolm and his family. Similarly, the revelations of both Malcolm’s initial conversion to Islam and his later pilgrimage to Mecca would mean much less without Malcolm’s extended aria from a prison cell at the end of act I, displaying regret but also rage, and identifying his responsibility as well his perception of the institutional racism that shaped his path.

Musically, Davis gives us quite a range of influences to work with. He draws heavily from 20th century atonal music, alternating these ideas easily with more lyrical, tonal writing, and introducing the texture of minimalism as a frequent element. The score of the opera features a fairly heavy use of elements taken from American Jazz - a large portion of the opera’s second scene, set in Boston as Malcolm is marveled by city life and in particular by the hustler Street, utilizes a mostly straightforward swing feel, Street crooning in a fairly spectacular bit of tenor showmanship and scatting. The orchestra uses

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trap kit (in addition to timpani and various mallet percussion) as a primary source of motion, and several parts in the score are indicated as needing “to be able to improvise in the jazz style” - several of the woodwind players in the orchestra are required to double between 2 and 6 instruments as well. Davis has a solid background as a jazz and improvising keyboardist, and as a result these ideas are integrated much more smoothly into his composition than they often are in orchestral music. The orchestra in the 1986 recording consists of some of the best of the downtown avant-garde and jazz scene at that time, many of which are still active today. We find solos used sparingly, to provide either some modal color over drones or ostinatos, serving various dramatic functions but especially providing a boost to some ecstatic moments in the libretto. It is clear for Davis that the language of jazz and improvisation is merely another palette to reach for when scoring for a large ensemble - with the exception of the second scene, we find it very rarely used as a racialized expository device as it is in the Joplin opera.

Anthony Braxton’s Trillium operas (including E, M, R and the recently produced J: The Non-Unconfessionables as subtitles) are hard to evaluate in the context of other operas, and yet work firmly within the tradition as they willfully subvert many of the conventions. Braxton, as a composer, has come face to face with the question of identity many times, most often by critics. His music, at once too intellectual to belong to the jazz canon and too visceral (and, to some degree, indeterminate) to be programmed in the concert hall, has often been subject to clumsy questions of racial identity, and the image and

promotion of the man himself has, until recently, failed to take into account many facets of his personality and philosophy that power his music as much as the physical act of playing it. The Trillium operas, then, are a series of 36 one-act operas (in progress) for orchestra of varying sizes, devised as much as ritual or occult happenings as an evening at the theater. Four act groups make up the body of Trillium E, the librettos of which are unconnected. The cast, consisting of 12 singers, serves different functions in each situation - a pair of characters who may be married in one act may never interact in another. Every singer makes up the chorus.

Each character is conceived as some type of archetype, with mythic names like Helena and Sundance contrasting blunt ones like Bubba John Jack and Ashmenton. The narratives often deal with negotiations of some type, whether political (one act of Trilllium E features a Star Trek-like space crew in their diplomatic encounter with an alien race) or personal (another features a comically drawnout negotiation between a genie and each member of the family who released him).

Librettos, written by the composer, often have the function of Medieval morality plays, and the audience or listener has the experience of watching a kind of metaphysical repertory theater, where sometimes a character will pull back from the “story” with the phrase “I have a feeling…” and provide some omniscient observation, sometimes unrelated to the action at hand. Braxton acknowledges the philosophical and aesthetic choice to create opera where the story is almost secondary, yet, but there are nevertheless moments of extreme humor, poignancy, and emotional

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investment among these works, particularly in Trillium E. The music, like much of Braxton’s output, is firmly modernist and often atonal, yet Braxton’s sense of organization, both of improvised/indeterminate sound and of through-composed orchestrations, is impeccable, part of what makes entering his sometimes dense soundworld navigable.

There are moments of solo improvisation alongside the orchestral texture in this opera, provided by one of the 12 main instrumental soloists among the orchestra - there also a few graphic passages in the score and some conducted improvisations too utilizing Braxton’s Language music system (a system present in much of his music as a performer as well as music for larger ensembles). But a good majority of the music for the ensemble is fully notated, and gets to a high degree of precision and sensitivity in balance with the highly speech-like vocal writing. The cast often includes jazz and other disciplines of singer alongside operatic vocalists, and yet with this vocal writing the timbral differences are less noticeable between members of the cast with varying backgrounds. The orchestra is similarly diverse, including many musicians that are adept improvisers, and who have a distinct personal and technical language to bring to the performance as well. Those

looking for pentatonic motifs, blue notes, swing passages, anything easily identifiable as a Black American musical trait, will not find those here. Trillium E is nevertheless a thoroughly Black theatrical experience in many ways, tying diasporic narrative instincts in with the aesthetic of Black creative music, both improvised and not. Its mysticism and playfulness provide a nice balance to the mostly functional libretto.

As we see art changing in reaction to history, so too we can imagine a perception of art that accepts those changes. As we have learned to reject the cheap “local color” tricks used by many composers in the art-house canon in favor of better, more sincere musical narration, so too we can learn from what composers of color are saying, as opera continues to diversify and the definition of opera continues to evolve. We can listen to what singers of color have to say about opera’s problematic history with regards to race. If opera is to continue as a relevant art form, these considerations should be active in the continuing conversation about the medium. In turn, these questions of legitimacy, which are unfortunately common for many non-white composers working in Academia and within the western canon, will hopefully become scarcer.

Adam Matlock is a composer, vocalist and accordionist based in New Haven, CT. He has written one opera, Red Giant, and several other musical drama works of various forms. He once pretended for several years to have the discipline to be a fiction writer. email: weillwedance@gmail.com

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Is it just a make-up or is it bigotry?

By Lawrence Axelrod The 17th century saw the rapid expansion of European influence all over the globe.

Fanciful depictions of the peoples they encountered in these locations found their way into all areas of arts and crafts. Coincidentally, the new genre called “opera” was birthing at the same moment. Even though the earliest operas emphasized mythological subjects, composers and librettists were soon depicting the exoticism in their works.

Henry Purcell’s semi-opera, The Indian Queen (written in 1695 and taken from John Dryden’s 1664 play depicting a war between Peru and Mexico), is one of the first operatic works including characters from outside the European sphere. Libretti that look to the Near East, such as Händel’s Tamerlano (1724) and Serse (1738), are more prevalent, presumably because of this region’s millennia of contact with Europe through trade, conquest, and biblical reference. Then, there is Rameau’s opera-ballet Les Indes Galantes (1735), whose four acts depict Turks, Inca, Persians, and Native Americans (from Illinois) respectively.

African characters appear as early as Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas (1688) and continue to appear infrequently until Monastatos, in Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte in 1791.

After the beginning of the 19th century, non-European subjects became more frequent, allowing composers to work many different influences into the fabric of their music. A very partial list includes: Rossini’s L’Italiana in Algieri (1813), Il Turco in Italia (1814), Otello (1816), and Semiramide (1823); Offenbach’s Ba-ta-clan (1855), Bizet’s Les

Pêcheurs de Perles (1863), Meyerbeer’s L’Africaine (1865), Verdi’s Aida (1871), Gilbert and Sullivan’s The Mikado (1885) and Utopia, Limited (1893), Puccini’s Madama Butterfly (1904) and Turandot (1924/26), and Lehar’s The Land of Smiles (1929).

While there were noted classical singers who were not Caucasian before the 20th century, it is safe to say that the vast majority of the time, the characters in these exotically themed operas were created by Caucasians using make-up. A chorus of geishas or Ethiopian captives or Turks or Peruvians was simply conjured with yellow-, black-, brown-, or orange-tinted hues. After all, an opera house can’t afford to find soloists or a chorus of the ethnicity called for in each opera. What other option is there?

This practice was never really questioned, as it was done for an entirely different theatrical reason than what we call “black face.” These operatic characters are not in this make up to be mocked, to be objects of lowbrow comedy or to be made inferior. They are evoking other places in the world specified by the composers and librettists.

Sensitivities have changed, however.

Seeing a “darkened” opera chorus or singer now makes us a bit squirmy. So what do we do about the very blond tenor who plays the role of Otello? Or the Asian soprano singing Aida? Or the redhead singing Cio-Cio San? And what about the chorus that needs several different ethnicities in a season? How can we be true to the intentions of the composers and librettists who had very specific things in

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mind with these settings and peoples and honor our more modern sense of avoiding bigotry?

Earlier in operatic history, these ethnically different characters served as little more than diversions - charming and exotic twists to bring freshness to basic romantic or familial plotlines. But as musical history progressed, “otherness” is precisely what the composers and librettists intended. It matters that Otello is a Moor. It matters that Monastatos is different from the other characters in a fundamental way. It matters that Cio-Cio San is Japanese and that Turandot is Chinese.

Difference in race or ethnicity explains a lot of why the characters do what they do and their theatrical world. Also, in the late 19th and into the 20th century, composers began using specific references to the location of the opera in the music itself. Removing the ethnicity of the characters then makes that aspect of the music seem random or meaningless.

Certain solutions can be productionspecific. Perhaps there are ways that costume can suggest and cover in ways that substitute for make-up. Perhaps lighting can be used in a way to help extend the illusion. But, other than this, there is no one sweeping decision that can be made. Some productions will go the route of Lyric Opera in Chicago, where the Ethiopians were blue and red, avoiding the issue entirely. If you want a more realistic take on the opera, however, this isn’t a great solution.

Another aspect of this subject that is very interesting, but occurs much less frequently, is the manner in which characters comment upon ethnicity or race. In the days before supertitles, opera companies did not need to worry about the widespread impact about the

translation of a word or phrase and its effect on the audience. Now they are literally written large for an entire audience’s reaction. Note the sounds and hisses that regularly now occur at Sarastro’s most famously misogynistic lines in Die Zauberflöte. In that same opera, Monastatos says to Pamina: “Warum zitterst du? vor meiner schwarzen Farbe, oder vor dem ausgedachten Mord?” (Why are you shivering? Because of my black color or because of the murder plan?). In a production of this several years ago, evidently fearing some kind of negative reaction, the supertitle at this moment read “because I am ugly” instead of the literal translation. How many people knew the opera well enough or spoke German to pick up this radical, if momentary, difference in meaning? Is this really a help or just a smoke screen to patch over a nonpolitically correct moment from a different era to assuage an audience’s unease?

A related issue is presented in Ravel’s fairytale opera, L’Enfant et les Sortilèges. The libretto here is a work of beauty and genius by the famous French author Colette, a contemporary of the composer. In the opera, various household objects and animals come to life or speak to confront the child who has broken, torn, tormented, or defaced them. One of these is a Chinese Tea Cup. Her words are a combination of known Chinese and Japanese words (like Mah Jong and Harakiri) with fractured French as if spoken with a strong Chinese accent. The result is brilliant nonsense that is very funny and utterly untranslatable. (She ends up dancing a soft shoe number with pieces of furniture…)

BUT… this IS intentionally making fun of the way a foreigner would speak French. Does the supertitle wizard translate into equally

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politically incorrect English or use “good�

English words in a nonsensical manner that will convey a similar, if sanitized, meaning?

This issue brings up a lot of questions about the sensitivities in regard to people, words, and music. Most companies find themselves walking on eggshells, void of absolute, definitive solutions. Perhaps it is best to work towards what the composer and librettist intended. Then, let the director explain in the program book notes why s/he

made these choices and allow the audience to have its own opinion. These operas, like all works of art, are products of their own times and the attitudes and mores that prevailed in them. Portraying this on stage does not necessarily make an opera a piece of taxidermy from a bygone era. It will be interesting, however, to see how the facets of this topic are revisited in the future and the changes this will bring to these pieces of music.

Lawrence Axelrod is a composer, pianist and conductor in Chicago. He also organizes, leads and teaches the trips of Opera Adventures - domestic and international travel to great destinations to see and learn about opera. Next Stop: Santa Fe in August 2014! Please go to operaadventures.com for details.

Make sure to follow Opera21 on Twitter @opera21mag

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