Setting Operas in the Heart of Darkness

To avoid the unpleasant task of writing my book, I've decided to spend a few minutes ruminating on 19th century operas that deal with African settings and characters. Many years ago, I sent out a query to the American Musicological Society's listserve inquiring about operas that have black characters in them. Based on the answers I received, I compiled a list of operas to investigate at some point in my life. Little did I know at the time that some really great scholars were also working on interrogating blackness in opera, and they published a book later that year that's literally called Blackness in Opera:

Coolness, right? Anyway. What I want to focus on, however, are 19th century operas that specifically used an African setting or African character. Because they all share a trait that musicologists have kind of picked up on but I'm not sure anyone's discussed at length: although most of these operas claim to be set in "Africa" (as in "sub-Saharan Africa"), they're really not. 

I think the main example that people are aware of here is Giacomo Meyerbeer's popular 1865 opera, L'Africaine:

Supposedly a tale about Vasco de Gama's adventures around the world, a good chunk of it takes place on an African island where the "natives" practice a religion much more akin to Hinduism. The island also appears to be in the Indian Ocean, perhaps near Madagascar or someplace like that. Here's the wonderful opera singer Shirley Verrett singing part of it with Placido Domingo at the San Francisco Opera in 1988:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GoTNo5Zz3RU
(for some reason, the blog won't let me upload the video directly onto the page today)

If you watch the clip, you'll see that Girlfriend is straight-up wearing an Indian sari in the opera. How "African" is Meyerbeer's L'Africaine, I (and numerous musicologists) have wondered?

But Meyerbeer's opera, L'Africaine, isn't the only one that side steps Africanism in its quest to be exotic. Countless scholars have debated how we're supposed to interpret Verdi's Aida:

The opera's set in ancient Egypt, and the main femme fatale/femme fragile is an Ethiopian princess. How "Ethiopian" the opera director chooses to make her has greatly fluctuated over time.

Here's Grace Bumbry as "Aida":

The fabulous diva, Leontyne Price, serving it as usual (girlfriend don't PLAY):

Violetta Urmana at the Met recently (in brownface. Yes, I said it):

And as much as audiences enjoyed the opera when it premiered, some felt uncomfortable with its black African qualities. Here's Hanslick complaining about the work in 1880:

“The politics and religion, the oddities of dress and civilization of the ancient Egyptians are altogether too strange for us [Viennese/Germans]. We do not feel at ease among a lot of brown and black painted men. It may be urged that this is merely external, yet, for all, the spectator's sympathies are chilled…Think of nothing but dark-colored singers on the stage! Then, besides, the ugly, vaulting negroes and the dancing women dressed and painted in the most repulsive manner! An opera should present something of the lovely and agreeable, and no ethnological exactness can compensate for a total lack of beauty."

 (Taken from Dwight's Journal of Music, December 18, 1880, p. 201)

 
Yikes. In Hanslick's review, it seems unimaginable or inconceivable that one could depict black characters in an aesthetically pleasing way.

David Brodbeck has done some really fascinating work looking at Viennese reception of Karl Goldmark's opera, Queen of Sheba (Königin von Saba). Reviews were laced with thinly-veiled (or oftentimes open and hostile) anti-Semitic remarks that claimed that the music and setting reminded the critics of a Jewish service at the synagogue (as if any of them had ever been. But whatever):

Lastly, I want to point out Franz von Suppe's operetta, Die Afrikareise, from 1885:

 Zoe has a fancy fellowship at Harvard this summer to do some digging around, and she's been flipping through the score and libretto for this operetta. So far, she's discovered that the work really isn't set in Africa at all, although they do mention the country Chad at one point. Rather, it seems to have a more traditional orientalist setting (in the Saidian sense of the word).

So what gives, 19th century opera composers? Why this weird avoidance to actually set your "African" operas in Africa? Why limit your stereotyping to Asian characters and North African/Middle Eastern ones?

I wonder, however, if this hesitancy to depict sub-Saharan Africa goes across all of the arts. Orientalist paintings usually focused on North Africa, for example:

Horace Vernet, The Lion Hunt (1836)

And Joseph Conrad's book, Heart of Darkness, might very well be one of the first major cultural products to orientalize Africa that was widely consumed by Europeans:

But it came out in 1899. Were there really so few cultural products that depicted Africa/Africans/Africanness/Blackness that held European popular attention before then?

I remain dissatisfied with our knowledge/lack of knowledge of 19th century musical works dealing with African themes and notions of blackness. All of this stuff is much more fleshed out when it comes to talking about the 20th century (Porgy and Bess, Johnny Spielt Auf, Show Boat, etc.). But there's an earlier history here, ripe for an investigation and analysis, one that can benefit from postcolonial analysis, from a musicologist's fine ear and critical eye looking at the score. Heavens knows that I can't tackle this project right now. But I encourage anyone interested in this blog post to investigate further.

A Brief History of the "Black Carmen" (finally, Kira gets to talk about Beyonce!)

Yesterday morning, I gave a lecture to about 130 students on orientalism in art and music. I talked about Puccini's Madame Butterfly at one point, and I think I might have terrified my students a little bit by sharing with them something I call the "Madame Butterfly effect:" the European-American feminization of East Asia. I showed them Madonna, Gwen Stefani, and Katy Perry playing "geisha"(look up Katy Perry's reasons for playing a geisha. I just can't even right now). In feminizing the East, I argued, the West (used loosely here) also distorts/dismisses/rejects Asian masculinity as well. Which, I told my students, is why the Asian male character in the tv show, "2 Broke Girls," is, um, disappointing. We're supposed to see him as asexual, incapable of wooing any American woman regardless of his antics. He's a small child, a boy - not a man - who is trying to act much older than he is. When he attempts to be a strong and stern manager, he's "play-acting" his manhood. Because he doesn't have any.

I'm digressing. I also showed my students a clip from Bizet's opera, Carmen (the Franco Rosi 1984 film version, OBVS):

The gypsy Carmen is a loose amalgam of different possible ethnicities, especially in the original novella by Prosper Merimee. With wild hair and olive skin, Carmen is ethnically ambiguous, causing Don Jose at one point to ask her (in the novella) if she's possibly a Moor or (dare he think it!) Jewish.

As I was watching this youtube clip with my students in class my mind wandered over to the fact that at some point in the 20th century, Carmen became a character that many African American singers could take on. Last year at the annual American Musicological Society Conference in Pittsburgh, musicologist Kristen Turner from UNC-Chapel Hill presented her research on the first African American opera company from the early 20th century. One of the first productions they staged was Bizet's Carmen. By the 1960s, it seemed perfectly acceptable for African American singers to play her:

A young (and very pretty!) Grace Bumrby in the role of Carmen.

The fabulous diva, Leontyne Price, as Carmen. Which I find a bit odd, given her voice type, no? Regardless: she is SERVING IT on this album cover. Serving it to the Gods.

The mezzo-soprano Denyce Graves has made a name for herself playing Carmen as well.

But this Carmen business goes beyond a few singers being type-casted for the role. When we see new interpretations or retellings of the Carmen tale, they're retold as black tales (African American, more specifically).

Carmen Jones is an excellent example of that. Premiering in 1943 as a Broadway musical (and later in 1954 as a film), Carmen Jones now takes place during WWII at an American parachute factory instead of a Spanish cigarette factory. I think most people are familiar with the 1954 film version, starring Dorothy Dandridge and Harry Belafonte. It's colorful, entertaining, and an intriguing retelling to think about.

Musicologist Annegret Fauser's article on Carmen Jones might be a good place to start if you're looking for more information: "“Dixie Carmen”: War, Race, and Identity in Oscar Hammerstein's Carmen Jones (1943)" in Journal of the Society for American Music, Volume 4, No. 2 (May 2010), pp. 127-174: http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPage=online&aid=7530408

Of course I would be remiss if I didn't mention the *other* other Carmen, which is Beyonce's 2001 TV Movie, Carmen: A Hip-Hopera (I kid you not):

This production has everything my pop-culture addled brain and spectacle-loving heart desires. This time, Carmen Brown is an aspiring actress who causes trouble wherever she goes. The cast in this production reads like a "who's who" list of late 90s/early 2000s actors and pop/hip-hop musicians: Mekhi Phifer (!), Mos Def (!), Wycleaf Jean, Joy Bryant, Lil Bow Wow, and Jermaine Dupri (!) all make an appearance at one point or another.

And because we all need to see a clip of this in action:

As I mentioned in one of our previous SGS posts, I'm drawn to spectacle, so I'm eating this up like it's cake.

Obvious fact of the day: Black American singers have historically had a difficult time landing roles in the opera world. I don't have time to get into it, but let's just say that there were (and still are) racial biases in operatic typecasting. But what is intriguing to me about Bizet's opera, Carmen, are the many transformations it's undergone since the late 19th century. It's not just that Bizet's original production lent itself well to having different singers perform it. Rather, by the end of the 20th century, the opera became (in American popular culture anyway) black-owned. Beyonce's Carmen was *ridiculous* in a glorious late 90s/early 2000s pop music sort of way. But it's not like Queen Bey (all hail!) was stepping into uncharted territory by reimagining this tale. In fact, critics denounced it as unimaginative.

I'll keep picking away at the "Black Carmen" phenomenon over the years, I'm sure. I'm not done mining this yet. There are just too many gems in this history. Any thoughts on other "black Carmens" out there that I might have missed? Please post in the comments.