Final Years

The final chapter examines Eubie’s revived career on stage and record in the 1970s and 1980s. Furthermore, the chapter discusses key figures who played a role in promoting his career, including historian Robert Kimball; composer/pianist William Bolcom and his wife, singer Joan Morris; recording engineer Carl Seltzer, who partnered with Eubie in forming Eubie Blake Music (Eubie’s record label and publishing company); and lawyer Elliot Hoffman, who championed and protected Blake’s work. The chapter also explores the impact of the mental decline and deaths of Noble Sissle and Andy Razaf on Eubie; Julianne Boyd’s production of a new musical review, Eubie!, which brought his return to Broadway; the show’s development and casting, including bringing Maurice and Gregory Hines to Broadway and their subsequent success; and difficulties dealing with the show’s producer, Ashton Springer. Finally, the chapter relates Eubie’s complex feelings about racism; his work with two biographers, African American journalist Lawrence Carter and jazz writer Al Rose; Rose’s fights with Elliot Hoffman over the writing and publication of his biography; late accolades; and Eubie’s final performances and death.

Haunted Legacies

This chapter examines the song cycle (also thought of as a monodrama or solo opera) by composer William Bolcom and playwright/librettist Sandra Seaton, From the Diary of Sally Hemings. The chapter includes a discussion of the DNA, kinship, and social controversies over the interracial pairing of Jefferson, a founder of the United States as a nation, and Hemings, his slave and consort. Through an analysis of the compositional genesis of the work, the text, and the music, this chapter also explores what is at stake for thinking about the breakdown of black-white racial categories. Extended references are made to Saartijie Baartman (the South African “Hottentot Venus”) and Edward Ball, the descendent of the Ball plantation who looked up interracial relationships with slaves in his family.

Black Opera

This is a book about thinking, interpreting, and writing about music in performance that incorporates how race, gender, sexuality, and nation help shape the analysis of opera today. Case-study operas are chosen within the diaspora of the United States and South Africa. Both countries had segregation policies that kept black performers and musicians out of opera. During the civil rights movement and after apartheid, black performers in both countries not only excelled in opera, they also began writing their own stories into the genre. Featured operas in this study span the Atlantic and bring together works performed in the West (the United States and Europe) and South Africa. Focal works are: From the Diary of Sally Hemings (William Bolcom and Sandra Seaton), Porgy and Bess, and Winnie: The Opera (Bongani Ndodana-Breen). A chapter is devoted to the nineteenth-century Carmens (novella by Mérimée and opera by Bizet) and black settings in the United States (Carmen Jones, Carmen: A Hip Hopera) and South Africa (U-Carmen eKhayelitsha). Woven within the discussions of specific works are three rubrics for how the text and music create the drama: Who is in the story? Who speaks? and Who is in the audience doing the interpreting? These questions, combined with a historical context that includes how a work also resonates in the present day, form the basis for an engaged musicological practice.

MARKETING THE VOICE: OPERA, FILM, AND THE CASE OF ROBERT ALTMAN

In 2004, the Lyric Opera of Chicago celebrated two milestones: its fiftieth anniversary and the premiere of A Wedding. With music and libretto by Pulitzer Prize–winning composer William Bolcom, film director Robert Altman, and Arnold Weinstein, the opera received intense international coverage. Prepremiere articles, major features, interviews, and reviews appeared in Opera Now, Opernwelt, Opera, and Opera Quarterly. The Lyric's A Wedding dominated the August issue of Opera News, occupying the cover and several features, complete with glossy photos of the photogenic young leads dressed in luxurious wedding attire (see Figure 1).

Bolcom, Gann and other Americans

WILLIAM BOLCOM: Songs of Innocence and of Experience. Christine Brewer, Measha Brueggergosman, Hana Davidson, Linda Hohenfeld, Carmen Pelton (sops), Joan Morris (mezzo-sop), Marietta Simpson (con), Thomas Young (ten), Nmon Ford (bar), Nathan Lee Graham (speaker/vocals), Tommy Morgan (harmonica), Peter ‘Madcat’ Ruth (harmonica and vocals), Jeremy Kittel (fiddle), The University of Michigan Musical Society Choral Union, Chamber Choir, University Choir, Orpheus Singers, Michigan State University Children’s Choir, Contemporary Directions Ensemble, University Symphony Orchestra c. Leonard Slatkin. Naxos 8.559216-18.AARON COPLAND: Inscape. ROGER SESSIONS: Symphony No. 8. GEORGE PERLE: Transcendental Modulations. BERNARD RANDS: …where the murmurs die… . The American Symphony Orchestra c. Leon Botstein. New World 80631-2.KYLE GANN: Nude Rolling Down an Escalator: Studies for Disklavier. New World 80633-2.