A performance cancellation or delay is usually cause for regret, but for participants in this opera, mostly black singers and actors, it was a reprieve. Star singer Kenneth Kellogg said in a recent interview that "there wasn’t a day in rehearsal that somebody didn’t break down and cry,” because for many of the protagonists, the opera’s story was too real. Kellogg portrays the opera’s leading character, a black policeman whose son is shot to death by a white policeman.
Libretto by Tazewell Thompson has three main characters: the Father, the Mother and the Son. The opening act comprises a series of discussions among family members and friends about their aspirations in the context of everyday injustice in minority neighborhoods. When a baby boy is born the family rejoices, but there are also apprehensions about his future amid growing police intimidation of young black men.
Things turn tense when the teenage Son, dressed in a hoodie and glued to his laptop becomes involved in protests against police violation. His father’s argument that he and his fellow officers risk their lives to protect communities is wasted on the angry young man, who calls his father a pathetic "black man in blue."
Photo by Karli Cadel: Kenneth Kellogg and Aaron Crouch as the Father and the Son at the Glimmerglass Festival, 2019
The family is devastated when the Son gets killed during a protest, leaving the Father struggling to reconcile the faith in his profession with the tragic loss of his son. The funeral scene offers some of the opera’s most ambitious choral pieces, accented in places with the soaring duet of grieving parents.
American composers have developed a unique American operatic style, with recognizably American sound and unmistakably American themes. The effort to branch away from the European opera was there from the very beginning. As early as 1855, New York saw the premiere of George Frederick Bristow's opera Rip Van Winkle, based on Washington Irving’s short story. The composer championed American music and themes throughout his life and was critical of his contemporaries who did not.
Since then, other American literary masterpieces such as Little Women, The Great Gatsby and A View from the Bridge have been adapted for the musical theater. But few have been as successful as the works based on true events. One of the first ones was The Ballad of Baby Doe by Douglas Moore, which premiered in 1956 at the Central City Opera in Colorado, where the real historical figures that inspired the opera, had lived.
When John Adams presented his opera Nixon in China in 1987 in Houston, some of the main characters were still alive. Initially considered a gimmick, the so-called docu-drama gained worldwide recognition and started a new trend that eventually caught on in Europe. In 2011, London’s Royal Opera House premiered Anna Nicole, an opera about the tragic life and death of American celebrity model Anna Nicole. Critics were not sure how to look at this provocative work, but all the six performances were sold out. Anna Nicole was portrayed by star soprano Eva-Maria Westbroek who then went on to New York to sing Sieglinde in Wagner’s Ring.
But the most performed American opera of all time is Porgy and Bess, which premiered in 1935 and has remained a symbol of American culture worldwide. There is hardly a place where the Summertime tune is not recognized even by people who do not know the opera. The music drama about African-American experience was crafted by three white men, the fact not lost on many black composers whose work has been ignored or neglected. Critics have described Porgy and Bess as a symbol of systemic racism in the American artistic world.
Many Americans would be surprised to learn that one of the earliest American opera composers, producers and teachers was a black man. Harry Lawrence Freeman wrote more than 20 operas and founded several music schools and organizations, including the Negro Opera Company. At the age of 22 he produced his first opera Epthelia in Denver. His second opera, The Martyr, was performed in several U.S. cities, while the others could not garner sufficient support in the U.S. music circles of his time. Still, during his lifetime Freeman was known as “the black Wagner.”
Scot Joplin’s 1911 Treemonisha is the only opera by a U.S. black composer that is still performed from time to time, albeit in smaller theaters, and there is a commercial recording of it.
Despite being ignored, African-American composers have created ambitious music pieces, some of which have survived. Scholars as well as music companies are now working to bring some of them to light and reverse years of neglect.
Among them is Freeman’s Voodoo that was performed in semi-staged production in 2015 in New York.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uBMZymNy8Nc
Shirley Graham du Bois’ epic work Tom-Tom was performed at Harvard two years ago, for the first time since its 1932 premiere at Cleveland Stadium.
The Metropolitan Opera has announced plans to bring Terence Blanchard’s work Fire Shut Up in My Bones, based on Charles Blow’s 2014 memoir, which was first performed in St. Luis last year. This will be the first production by a black composer and black librettist (Kasi Lemmons) staged by the Metropolitan Opera in its 136-year history.
American opera companies have long fought to diverse their audiences, which are predominantly white people. One way to attract new audiences is to produce a new opera. But with most operas written by white composers on white themes, it is hard to attract people of different backgrounds.
“Rarely do you go to the opera and see black people onstage really letting you know how they feel with a story written by a black librettist,” said Kellogg. The music for Blue is composed by a white woman, but the libretto is written by a black theater director.
With the story so close to real life events, many people will wonder why go see it in the theater. Certainly, it is easier to escape the harsh reality with the music of Mozart or Rossini, but opera is ultimately about real people and their emotions in conflict or tragedy, as well as in joyful times. An average opera goer will go to see Carmen or La bohème, attracted by name recognition more than a sense of discovery. But a more avid fan is curious to examine a new work or at least a re-invented production of an old one. The advent of live opera simulcasts in movie theaters, and online opera streams has made the discovery of opera, both the time-tested classics and daring new productions, accessible to everyone. The most recent Met production of Glass’s Akhnaten must have dazzled even a complete novice.
Unlike Akhnaten, Blue is an intimate drama intent on inspiring contemplation of current events rather than dazzling. It premiered in 2019 at The Glimmerglass Festival and received the 2020 award for best opera from The Music Critics Association of North America. Performances in several cities have been cancelled this year due to the coronavirus pandemic. The Lyric Opera of Chicago has rescheduled performances for January of 2021 and Minnesota Opera for February 2021. Washington’s premiere has been rescheduled July 2021 and Toledo opera in Ohio announced plans to produce Blue in February 2022.
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