Voodoo (opera)

Last updated

Voodoo is an opera in three acts with music and libretto by Harry Lawrence Freeman. A product of the Harlem Renaissance, it was first performed with piano accompaniment as a radio broadcast on May 20, 1928. The first staged performance with orchestra took place on September 10, 1928, at the Palm Garden (a temporary name for the 52nd Street Theatre) in New York City. [1]

Contents

History

Freeman was a talented African-American musician, becoming assistant church organist at age 10. A seminal moment in his life was seeing Richard Wagner's opera Tannhäuser . In 1891, at age 18, he completed his first opera. He continued to compose numerous operas during much of his life. [2]

In several articles concerning Voodoo, the New York Amsterdam News varied its reportage of the time Freeman had spent composing the opera. Initially, the paper said "Although Professor Freeman has been prepared for years for the opportunity to present the negro in opera he has had to bide his time." [3] After the opera had closed, the paper said that Freeman had been working on the opera for two years. [4] The paper corrected itself later when it reported that he had completed the opera in 1914. [5] (The finding aid for Freeman's papers at Columbia University indicates a vocal score dated 1912.) [2]

Synopsis

Voodoo is set in Louisiana during the Reconstruction Era. Cleota, a house servant, is in love with Mando, a plantation overseer on the plantation where they live. The voodoo queen, Lolo, is jealous and, seeing Cleota as a rival, tries to put her out of the way. A voodoo ceremony takes place during which Lolo and her associate, Fojo, distribute amulets and charms to participants, then retreat to a glen to invoke the snake-god. Cleota is about to be put to death but is rescued by Mando and Chloe (Lolo's mother). Another attempt by Lolo to subdue Cleota results in the queen being shot. [6] [7]

The New York Herald Tribune reported that the opera was to illustrate "typical Negro life in the days of slavery, while the music includes spirituals, chants, arias, tangoes and other dances, among these a ritualistic voodoo ceremony." [8]

Productions

The opera was first presented as a radio broadcast with piano accompaniment (played by Freeman) on May 20, 1928, over station WGBS. [9] The cast included Doris Trotman, soprano; Carlotta Freeman, soprano; Ray Yates, tenor; Otto Bohanan, baritone. [10]

A month later, Valdo Freeman, the composer's son and a baritone, sang excerpts from Voodoo as well as another of his father's operas, Plantation, during a radio recital also broadcast on WGBS on June 25, 1928. [11]

Notices prior to the production's staged premiere mentioned a "company of over fifty people." [12] [13] Advertisements also indicated the company was to include fifty people, [3] although this figure was reduced to thirty in later notices. [6] [8] [14]

The "Negro jazz grand opera" (as it was called by the New York Amsterdam News [3] ) had its first staged performance at the "Palm Garden" (apparently a temporary name for the 52nd Street Theatre) on September 10, 1928. Freeman conducted an orchestra of twenty-one musicians. [6] The review in the New York Herald Tribune said the presentation was "offered" by his son Valdo Freeman. [6] One review referred to the producing company as the "Negro Opera Company Inc." [15]

Costumes were supplied by Chrisdie & Carlotta, and F. Berner supplied the wigs. [16] The executive staff included Robert Eichenberg, Leon Williams, Esther Thompson, Octavia Smith, Philip Williams, William Thompson, Grace Abrams, and Walter Mattis. [17]

Voodoo was scheduled to run for a week with a matinée on Saturday. [6] Apparently it had to close early for lack of funding. [4]

The score was never published. The manuscript resides in the Rare Book & Manuscript Library of Columbia University. [18]

The first production of Voodoo since 1928 took place June 26–27, 2015 at Miller Theatre by the Harlem Opera Theatre, Morningside Opera, and the Harlem Chamber Players. It was conducted by Gregory Hopkins. [19]

Casts

RoleVoice typeFirst performance (on radio), May 20, 1928
Accompanist: Harry Lawrence Freeman		Premiere stage performance cast, September 10, 1928
Conductor: Harry Lawrence Freeman
CleotasopranoDoris TrotmanDoris Trotman
Lolosoprano Carlotta Freeman Carlotta Freeman
MandotenorRay YatesRay Yates
baritoneOtto BohananValdo Freeman
baritoneThomas R. Hall
Marie Woodby
bassWilliam H. Holland
Joseph Northern
Rosetta Jones
dancerOllie Burgoyne

The alternate cast for the staged presentation included Rosetta Jones, Cordelia Paterson, Luther Lamont, Blanche Smith, John H. Eckles, Leo C. Evans, and Harold Bryant. Named participants also included the dancer Ollie Burgoyne, who had recently performed at the Folies Bergère in Paris. [8]

Response

Calling it (incorrectly) the first opera composed, produced, and sung by African Americans, [1] the New York Herald Tribune's detailed review heralded the production, calling it "another step toward establishing a distinct negro culture in this country." [6] The review went on to note production limitations brought about due to lack of sufficient funding. The composer's style came in for harder criticism, with the reviewer calling his music "not original" since it was too dependent on external influences such as spirituals and Tin Pan Alley songs. But the same reviewer said the opening dance of the second act was most effective, and called the third act the most original, showing off the composer's "inspired creative powers" with "effectively barbaric moments the music accompanying the voodoo ceremony" and "various elements making a conglomerate rather than a homogeneous, well-fused score." Nevertheless, the combination of nineteenth-century Italian-French style arias with Freeman's modernistic trends created an odd juxtaposition.

In general, the reviewer found the plot complex but believable, while the libretto was generally good but at times "a trifle lavish." Of the singers, the review noted Doris Trotman's "rich soprano" while Carlotta Freeman was good but with "weak high notes." While calling Valdo Freeman and Thomas R. Hall "the best voices of the evening," the review opined that "the performance was earnest rather than polished." [6]

Writing in the Hartford Courant, Pierre Key reported that the production was "feeble" and "amateurish." But his estimation of the score was more positive: "A degree of rhythmic invention and facility for instrumental color are excellences this composer has." [20] The New York Times also felt that the "production [was] amateur in spirit." The unnamed reviewer noted, "The composer utilizes themes from spirituals, Southern melodies, and jazz rhythms which, combined with traditional Italian operatic forms, produce a curiously naive mélange of varied styles." [7]

Writing for the Chicago Tribune , Alfred Frankenstein found the book formless (which he admitted was true of many operas) with most of the action taking place in the opera's final act, making the first two acts seem inconsequential. He criticized the use of language among the characters, the leads singing in proper English while subsidiary characters sang in "Negro dialect." He particularly condemned archaic-sounding language, such as the line "Ah, could I to thy for [my] life but restore." Frankenstein then continued his review by describing the stresses carried by African-Americans who must navigate a combination of racial inferiority and racial pride. He contended that these opposing forces can be heard in Voodoo as one hears the influences of Edward MacDowell, Richard Wagner, and Harry Burleigh as well as spirituals, although Freeman's musical expression was hampered by the poor libretto. Frankenstein concludes on a condescending note recommending that Freeman read the music history of various nationalities as a means of raising African-Americans' position within musical art. [15]

The African-American press had more understanding words to say about the opera. The New York Amsterdam News highlighted how Freeman had to pay for the production with his own funding and questioned why the African-American community wasn't more supportive. [4] A letter from a reader also questioned why more African-Americans did not attend the opera. [21]

Echoing the uneven musical style in other reviews, the Baltimore Afro-American noted that "the opera is not perfect." Its dependence on familiar styles resulted in the "impression of lacking a genuine authenticity and that it depends too much on outside influences to be completely Negro." [22]

The appearance of Voodoo inspired other African-American operas to surface. Just a month after the opera's premiere, Billboard announced a presentation of Deep Harlem, "another negro opera," to be produced by actor/director Earl Dancer. [23]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Claude McKay</span> Jamaican American writer and poet (1889–1948)

Festus Claudius "Claude" McKay OJ was a Jamaican-American writer and poet. He was a central figure in the Harlem Renaissance.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Apollo Theater</span> Entertainment venue in Manhattan, New York

The Apollo Theater is a multi-use theater at 253 West 125th Street in the Harlem neighborhood of Upper Manhattan in New York City. It is a popular venue for black American performers and is the home of the TV show Showtime at the Apollo. The theater, which has approximately 1,500 seats across three levels, was designed by George Keister with elements of the neoclassical style. The facade and interior of the theater are New York City designated landmarks and are listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The nonprofit Apollo Theater Foundation (ATF) operates the theater, as well as two smaller auditoriums at the Victoria Theater and a recording studio at the Apollo.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hubert Harrison</span> American philosopher (1883–1927)

Hubert Henry Harrison was a West Indian-American writer, orator, educator, critic, race and class conscious political activist, and radical internationalist based in Harlem, New York. He was described by activist A. Philip Randolph as "the father of Harlem radicalism" and by the historian Joel Augustus Rogers as "the foremost Afro-American intellect of his time." John G. Jackson of American Atheists described him as "The Black Socrates".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jules Bledsoe</span> American opera singer

Julius Lorenzo Cobb Bledsoe was an American baritone, a leading figure in the Harlem Renaissance, the first major Black opera singer in the United States, and one of the first Black artists to gain regular employment on Broadway.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Rose McClendon</span> American actress (1884–1936)

Rose McClendon was a leading African-American Broadway actress of the 1920s. A founder of the Negro People's Theatre, she guided the creation of the Federal Theatre Project's African American theatre units nationwide and briefly co-directed the New York Negro Theater Unit.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture</span> Public research library in New York City

The Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture is a research library of the New York Public Library (NYPL) and an archive repository for information on people of African descent worldwide. Located at 515 Malcolm X Boulevard between West 135th and 136th Streets in the Harlem neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City, it has, almost from its inception, been an integral part of the Harlem community. It is named for Afro-Puerto Rican scholar Arturo Alfonso Schomburg.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">African-American musical theater</span> Musical theater productions by African Americans

African-American musical theater includes late 19th- and early 20th-century musical theater productions by African Americans in New York City and Chicago. Actors from troupes such as the Lafayette Players also crossed over into film. The Pekin Theatre in Chicago was a popular and influential venue.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lafayette Theatre (Harlem)</span>

The Lafayette Theatre(1912–1951), known locally as "the House Beautiful", was one of the most famous theaters in Harlem. It was an entertainment venue located at 132nd Street and 7th Avenue in Harlem, New York. The structure was demolished in 2013.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Harry Lawrence Freeman</span> American composer and conductor (1869–1954)

Harry Lawrence Freeman was an American neoromantic opera composer, conductor, impresario and teacher. He was the first African-American to write an opera that was successfully produced. Freeman founded the Freeman School of Music and the Freeman School of Grand Opera, as well as several short-lived opera companies which gave first performances of his own compositions. During his life, he was known as "the black Wagner."

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Harlem Renaissance</span> African-American cultural movement in New York City in the 1920s

The Harlem Renaissance was an intellectual and cultural revival of African-American music, dance, art, fashion, literature, theater, politics and scholarship centered in Harlem, Manhattan, New York City, spanning the 1920s and 1930s. At the time, it was known as the "New Negro Movement", named after The New Negro, a 1925 anthology edited by Alain Locke. The movement also included the new African-American cultural expressions across the urban areas in the Northeast and Midwest United States affected by a renewed militancy in the general struggle for civil rights, combined with the Great Migration of African-American workers fleeing the racist conditions of the Jim Crow Deep South, as Harlem was the final destination of the largest number of those who migrated north.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lawrence Chenault</span> American actor

Lawrence Chenault was an American vaudeville performer and silent film actor. He appeared in approximately 24 films between years 1920 and 1934; most of his performances were in films directed by pioneering African-American filmmaker Oscar Micheaux. His brother, Jack Chenault, was also a film actor.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lester Walton</span> American diplomat

Lester Aglar Walton was a St. Louis-born Harlem Renaissance polymath and intellectual, a well-known figure in his day, who advanced civil rights in significant and prescient ways in journalism, entertainment, politics, diplomacy and elsewhere. The New York Times called him an "authority on Negro affairs." Historian Susan Curtis describes him as a man who "advised U.S. presidents and industrialists ... [and] was instrumental in desegregating housing" in New York City. As "America's first black reporter for a local daily," Walton also became the first full-time Black sportswriter and the first Black journalist to cover golf and the nascent sport of pre-1910 basketball.

Hemsley Winfield was an African-American dancer who created the New Negro Art Theater Dance Group.

Henry Francis Downing was an African-American sailor, politician, dramatist and novelist. His cousin was Hilary R. W. Johnson, the first African-born president of Liberia (1884–92).

Voodoo <i>Macbeth</i> Production of Macbeth adapted and directed by Orson Welles

The Voodoo Macbeth is a common nickname for the Federal Theatre Project's 1936 New York production of William Shakespeare's Macbeth. Orson Welles adapted and directed the production, moved the play's setting from Scotland to a fictional Caribbean island, recruited an entirely Black cast, and earned the nickname for his production from the Haitian vodou that fulfilled the role of Scottish witchcraft. A box office sensation, the production is regarded as a landmark theatrical event for several reasons: its innovative interpretation of the play, its success in promoting African-American theatre, and its role in securing the reputation of its 20-year-old director.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Elise Johnson McDougald</span> American educator, writer, and activist (1885–1971)

Elise Johnson McDougald, aka Gertrude Elise McDougald Ayer, was an American educator, writer, activist and first African-American woman principal in New York City public schools following the consolidation of the city in 1898. She was preceded by Sarah J. Garnet, who became the first African-American woman principal in Brooklyn, New York while it was still considered a separate city. McDougald's essay "The Double Task: The Struggle for Negro Women for Sex and Race Emancipation" was published in the March 1925 issue of Survey Graphic magazine, Harlem: The Mecca of the New Negro. This particular issue, edited by Alain Locke, helped usher in and define the Harlem Renaissance. McDougald's contribution to this magazine, which Locke adapted for inclusion as "The Task of Negro Womanhood" in his 1925 anthology The New Negro: An Interpretation, is an early example of African-American feminist writing.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Gerri Major</span> American woman author (1894–1984)

Gerri Major was an American journalist, editor, newscaster, publicist, public health official, author and community leader. During World War I, she was a major in the American Red Cross. Thereafter, she became a society columnist and editor for African American newspapers in her home city of New York as well as in Pittsburgh, Chicago, and Baltimore. In 1936, a newspaper reporter said her talent for writing vivid prose, editing, and maintaining a wide circle of influential friends brought her fame and gave her "a unique position similar to that of an arbiter over the local social set." Ebony magazine attested that by the end of the 1930s she had become "one of the best known black women in America." and at the time of her death in 1984, she held joint positions as associate editor of Jet and senior staff editor of Ebony.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hilda Perleno</span> American singer

Hilda Perleno was an American blues and jazz singer, known for her Broadway appearances in the 1920s and 1930s.

Joyce Mathis was an American soprano who was a concert artist, recitalist, and opera singer from the 1960s into the early 1990s. She is considered a part of the first generation of black classical singers to achieve success in the United States; breaking down racial barriers within the field of classical music. She won several notable singing competitions, including the Marian Anderson Award in 1967 and the Young Concert Artists in 1968. In 1970 she recorded the role of the High Priestess in Verdi's Aida alongside Leontyne Price and Plácido Domingo. Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Ned Rorem wrote his song cycle Women's Voices for her in 1975. In 1976 she created the role of Celestina in Roger Ames's opera Amistad at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. She appeared frequently in performances with Opera Ebony and the Boys Choir of Harlem in addition to touring widely as a recitalist and concert soprano.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Otto Bohanan</span>

Otto Leland Bohanan (1895-1932) was an African-American poet and composer.

References

  1. 1 2 Although Voodoo was billed as "the first American opera composed by an African American" (New York Amsterdam News (September 5, 1928), p. 6), Scott Joplin's A Guest of Honor was written earlier and performed in 1903 (the score is lost). Although Freeman had written his first opera in 1891, the Joplin opera is thus far the earliest known opera by an African American composed and performed.
  2. 1 2 H. Lawrence Freeman Papers, 1870-1982, Series I: Musical scores, Rare Book and Manuscript Library Collections, Columbia University Libraries.
  3. 1 2 3 "Voodoo at 52nd Street Sept. 10," New York Amsterdam News (August 29, 1928), p. 7.
  4. 1 2 3 "Lawrence Freeman's Opera," New York Amsterdam News (September 19, 1928), p. 16.
  5. ↑ Dave Peyton, "The Musical Bunch—Freeman's Jazz Opera," Chicago Defender (September 29, 1928), p. 6.
  6. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 F.D.P., "Negro Grand Opera Company Pleases in First Performance," New York Herald Tribune (September 11, 1928), p. 18.
  7. 1 2 "Voodoo, a Naive Melange," New York Times (September 11, 1928), p. 20.
  8. 1 2 3 "Operatic Notes," New York Herald Tribune (September 9, 1928), p. F7.
  9. ↑ M.T., "Voodoo, Negro Opera, Has Premier On Radio," New York Herald Tribune (May 21, 1928), p. 11.
  10. ↑ Richard L. Baltimore Jr., "Broadcasts Negro Grand Opera" New York Amsterdam News (May 23, 1928), p. 8.
  11. ↑ "Valdo Freeman, Negro Barytone, In Father's Compositions," New York Herald Tribune (June 24, 1928), p. G6.
  12. ↑ "The Negro Invades The Grand Opera Field," New York Amsterdam News (August 22, 1928), p. 6.
  13. ↑ "Negro Jazz Opera," Variety (September 5, 1928), p. 56.
  14. ↑ "Music Notes," New York Times (September 5, 1928), p. 35.
  15. 1 2 Alfred Frankenstein, "New York Hears First Negro Opera Company Sing "First Opera by Colored Composer"," Chicago Tribune (September 16, 1928), p. G4.
  16. ↑ Barclay V. McCarty, "Costumers," Billboard (September 29, 1928), p. 41.
  17. ↑ Barclay V. McCarty, "Negro Opera Is Produced," Billboard (September 22, 1928), p. 10.
  18. ↑ "Columbia's Rare Book & Manuscript Library Acquires Papers of H. Lawrence Freeman, Musician and Composer | Columbia University Libraries". library.columbia.edu. Retrieved 2024-10-16.
  19. ↑ Michael Cooper, "Long-Unheard Harlem Renaissance Opera Coming in June," New York Times (May 1, 2015), p. C3.
  20. ↑ Pierre Key, "Sharps and Flats," Hartford Courant (September 23, 1928), p. D1.
  21. ↑ Lydia Bass, "Freeman's Opera," New York Amsterdam News (October 3, 1928), p. 9.
  22. ↑ "Voodoo, Race Opera, Closes After Short N.Y. Run," Baltimore Afro-American (September 29, 1928), p. 9.
  23. ↑ "Another Negro Opera Planned For Broadway," Billboard (October 6, 1928), p. 8.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.