Walter Schillinger has commented:
IndianaPublicMedia.org
By Yael Ksander
Posted April 18, 2011
“Since
a massive earthquake in 2010, the island nation of Haiti has been much
in the news. But the French-speaking outpost in the Caribbean also
captured the collective imagination of African-American literati in the
1920s. An opera that premiered in South Bend, Indiana attests to their
fascination.
“Clarence Cameron White’s Ouanga is considered the first completely African-American opera. The classically trained White—a graduate of HowardUniversity and the Oberlin Conservatory—joined forces with librettist John Frederick
Matheus, a professor of Romance languages, at West Virginia State
College. Matheus’s interest in Haiti was shared by many blacks of the
Harlem Renaissance generation, seeking to research and preserve the
cultural forms and practices of the African diaspora.
“Set in Haiti in 1804, during the reign of Emperor Dessalines, Ouanga
was completed in 1932. White’s goal was to 'produce an opera entirely
for and about Negroes.' Performed in concert version later that year at
the Chicago Three Arts Club, and again as a concert in New York in
1941, the opera was first presented as a fully staged production at
South Bend’s Central High School Auditorium in 1949.
“The production was staged by South Bend’s Harry Thacker Burleigh
Music Association, an African-American music and theatre company that
produced operas from Bedrich Smetana’s The Bartered Bride to Samuel Coleridge-Taylor’s Hiawatha.
The Burleigh had been founded in 1933 by Josephine Curtis, an African
American graduate of the University of Chicago and the Kroeger School of
Music in St. Louis.
“Curtis’s
highly regarded company was unique in providing blacks professional
opportunities in the world of opera—options that extended from black
singers and instrumentalists to black composers, who were otherwise
encountering serious roadblocks. At the time of Ouanga’s premiere in
South Bend, the only other opera by a black composer to receive serious
attention was William Grant Still’s Troubled Island.
Also set in Dessalines-era Haiti, Still’s opera, completed in 1939, was
produced by the New York City Opera only after a ten-year delay.
“Funded
by the University of Notre Dame and the Indiana Cab Company, among
other entities, the Burleigh’s production of Ouanga in June 1949 was
attended by Joseph Charles, Haiti’s ambassador to the United States and
delegate to the United Nations. The South Bend Tribune pronounced the
production a 'resounding success.' Ouanga was fully staged again in
1950 in Philadelphia, and enjoyed two concert versions in New York in
1956–at the Metropolitan Opera House and at Carnegie Hall.” [Works
Lists for Henry “Harry” Thacker Burleigh (1866-1949) and William Grant Still (1895-1978) have been compiled by Prof. Dominique-René de Lerma of Lawrence University Conservatory and are featured at AfriClassical.com, which also profiles Samuel Coleridge-Taylor (1875-1912)]
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