[A photo of William Grant Still, composer of the opera "Troubled Island,'' which premiered in 1949 at the New York City Opera. (Photo is the sole property of William Grant Still Music,
and is used with permission)]
[Camilla Williams (John D. Kisch/Separate Cinema Archives/Getty)]
by Celeste Headlee
On Thursday, the New York City Opera filed for bankruptcy after falling short on an emergency effort to raise $7 million. It was called the “People’s Opera”
from the very beginning. The idea behind the NYCO was to have a place
where anyone could perform and nearly anyone could afford a
ticket. Former First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt wrote
on Feb. 9, 1960 that the NYCO offers “extremely good ballet, theatre,
and now opera, performances at a price that a great many people can
afford.”
The NYCO sprang from an effort by Roosevelt and New York Mayor
Fiorello LaGuardia to raise the funds needed to produce the opera “Troubled Island” by African-American composer William Grant Still.
They had heard the Metropolitan Opera had rejected Still’s scores and
decided to help produce the work independently. Although they did not
raise the money they needed, that effort gave birth to the idea for a
performing arts center where music by all Americans would be performed.
LaGuardia announced the creation of City Center in 1943 and the New York
City Opera was born.
The NYCO was more than a place where you could see "The Marriage of Figaro" for far less than you would pay at the Metropolitan Opera.
It was also a company that was dedicated, from its very inception, to
being inclusive. The first artistic director of opera at the City Center
(where the NYCO was housed) was Hungarian exile Laszlo Halasz,
who had fled Hitler’s Europe for the States in 1936. “Halasz understood
and gave agency to African American singers,” archivist and music
promoter Bill Doggett says, “because he understood issues of
discrimination based on race and religion from the firestorm of Europe
under Hitler.”
At a time when black singers were not allowed
to sing even in the chorus at the Met, Halasz brought African-American
baritone Todd Duncan to sing the role of Tonio in the opera "Pagliacci"
and the dashing toreador Escamillo in Bizet’s "Carmen." A year later,
Camilla Williams became the first African-American to get a regular
contract with a major American opera company when the NYCO cast her as
Ciao Ciao San in Puccini’s "Madame Butterfly." A couple of years later,
bass-baritone Lawrence Winters performed in Verdi’s "Aida" as Amonasro.
In 1955, young baritone Robert McFerrin became the first black man
to sing at the Metropolitan Opera. But a full six years before that, he
performed on the stage of the NYCO in “Troubled Island,” the opera that
Roosevelt and LaGuardia had tried to get produced. It was premiered by
the New York City Opera in 1949 and became the first opera written by an
African-American to be performed by a major American company. The
libretto was largely written by the poet Langston Hughes and the score
by the dean of African-American composers, William Grant Still. In the
interest of full disclosure, Still was my grandfather.
Halasz used to tell a story about his selection of the opera for the
NYCO season. He said that he was sitting at his piano with an enormous
stack of scores from hopeful composers, and he decided to start with the
one on the bottom. He pulled it out, began to play through it, and
thought it was the most beautiful music he had ever heard. That opera
was “Troubled Island,” based on the story of Jean Jacques Dessalines,
the leader of the Haitian revolution.
According to Halasz, he went to the Board of Directors and said he
wanted to produce “Troubled Island” and one of them said, “But Laszlo,
you can’t do that one. It was written by a colored man.” Halasz
answered, “Well, what color is he? I don’t care.”
The opera received a rapturous response from
the audience. My mother remembers, “Applause brought the composer to the
stage for twenty curtain calls, alone and with the cast. The reception
was unprecedented, almost ecstatic. It was a mystical height for my
father, whose greatest love was opera.” Until his death, my grandfather
remembered that premiere as one of the highest points of his career. And
the legacy of the NYCO became personal for me as well, as I’m now a
professional opera singer and a member of the board at Underworld Productions Opera in New York.
While the Metropolitan Opera has never produced an opera by an
African-American, the NYCO staged Still’s and “X, The Life and Times of
Malcolm X” by Anthony Davis. It was the first American company to play
music written by black composers and to hire black singers. Composer
Kevin Scott remains hopeful that “the day will come when an opera
composed by an African-American will grace the stage of the Met.”
"Ulysses Kay's last two operas are way overdue for a major revival,''
he said, "And so are those by William Grant Still, not to mention those
by Adolphus Hailstork, TJ Anderson, Anthony Davis, H Leslie Adams, Bill
Banfield and many others who deserve to be heard.''
[H. Leslie Adams (b. 1932), Adolphus C. Hailstork (b. 1941), Ulysses S. Kay, Jr. (1917-1995) and William
Grant Still (1895-1978) are profiled at AfriClassical.com, which
features a comprehensive Works List for Adams, Kay and Still by Dr. Dominique-René de
Lerma, http://www.CasaMusicaledeLerma.com]Comment by email:
Dear Bill, Thanks so much for the article. A sad day for the music world. NYCO has carved a truly historical place in music annals. Leslie H. Leslie Adams
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