Dreaming in ensemble How Black artists transformed American opera

According to professor and music writer Caplan, "a presumption of absence haunts the study of Black opera's history" which has been "'profoundly absent' from the scholarly literature." However, she writes, this is the result of "a lack of attention rather than a lack of historical material." In this passionate and impeccable work, Caplan uses that material to fill the void and foreground the stories of Black performers, composers, critics, and scholars. Her approach is holistic, "locating the activities of composers and solo performers alongside those of amateur ensembles, laborers, and listeners." Caplan begins with the 1893 premiere of an opera by composer Harry Lawrence Freeman and moves through the first half of the twentieth century, concluding with the 1955 Metropolitan Opera debut of contralto Marian Anderson. Throughout, Caplan emphasizes "the fundamentally generative and fundamentally collective nature of these artists' work in opera." The result is a significant contribution to the histories of American opera, the performing arts, and Black American culture. It will enlighten and inform opera fans and readers interested in Black artists and culture and inspire further inquiry and exploration.

Caplan (music, Worcester Polytechnic Inst.) details what she calls a Black operatic counterculture that both thrived and struggled in juxtaposition to the prevailing dominant white artistic milieu of 1890--1955. She focuses chiefly on the United States, with brief asides on how singers fared in Europe. Alongside familiar names such as Scott Joplin, the Gershwins' Porgy and Bess, and Marian Anderson, Caplan's exhaustive research and unearthing of previously hidden characters provide much food for thought of what might have been had these performers, composers, and opera companies not faced overt racism and definitively segregated societies. At the same time, they attempted to make their own valuable contributions to the growing operatic canon. Extensive contemporary quotes from critics, educators, and musicians center the narrative, while the expressive photographs add immediacy. VERDICT Caplan highlights a treasure trove of vocalists and creators in this magisterial work that will prove immensely rewarding to serious opera scholars and those studying race relations and sociology in the 20th-century United States.--Barry Zaslow

A professor examines Black opera artists' struggle for recognition. In 1925, more than 250 Black sopranos entered the Ferrari Fontana Vocal Trials at a Harlem branch of New York Public Library. The prize was free vocal lessons from the tenor and the start of an opera career. That the winners received neither lessons nor a career had much to do with "the racist ideology and practices that barred them from major US operatic institutions." Fortunately, that "never prevented Black artists from engaging with opera in creative and complex ways." In this well-researched study of Black soloists, composers, supernumeraries, and others from the first half of the 20th century, most of them women, Caplan, a historian on race and culture, tells the story of their "transformative impact on opera." She coins the term "Black operatic counterculture" to refer to Black artists' efforts to redefine opera and "yield new artistic and political meanings." Among the artists she celebrates are Shirley Graham, whose 1932 operaTom-Tom was "the first opera by a Black woman produced by a major opera company," and Marian Anderson, who in 1955 made her Metropolitan Opera debut in Verdi'sUn ballo in maschera, "the first time the company would engage a Black singer in a leading role." Not surprisingly for a scholarly work, this book has dense thickets of academic prose, such as when Caplan writes that Sylvester Russell, a Black theater critic, had "reoriented prominent models of cultural hierarchy toward liberatory ends." That's a pity, especially for a book about an art form often accused of being elitist and difficult. But readers untroubled by tall weeds will find a thoughtful introduction to figures who deserved greater fame and a sobering account of the racism they endured, as when instructors told soprano Anita Patti Brown that she had talent but would never become an opera star because "your color is against you." An ambitious, demanding work on neglected Black artists. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.