Includes bibliographical references (pages 239-254) and index.
Contents:
Conclusion: Engaged Musicology, Political Action, and Social Justice. 2. Black Opera across the Atlantic: Writing Black Music History and Opera's Unusual Place -- 3. Haunted Legacies: Interracial Secrets From the Diary of Sally Hemings -- 4. Contextualizing Race and Gender in Gershwin's Porgy and Bess -- 5. Carmen: From Nineteenth-Century France to Settings in the United States and South Africa in the Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuries -- 6. Winnie, Opera, and South African Artistic Nationhood -- Conclusion: Engaged Musicology, Political Action, and Social Justice.
Summary:
"From classic films like Carmen Jones to contemporary works like The Diary of Sally Hemings and U-Carmen eKhayelitsa, American and South African artists and composers have used opera to reclaim black people's place in history. Naomi Andre draws on the experiences of performers and audiences to explore this music's resonance with today's listeners. Interacting with creators and performers, as well as with the works themselves, Andre reveals how black opera unearths suppressed truths. These truths provoke complex, if uncomfortable, reconsideration of racial, gender, sexual, and other oppressive ideologies. Opera, in turn, operates as a cultural and political force that employs an immense, transformative power to represent or even liberate" -- Publisher.
This resource is supported by the Institute of Museum and Library Services under the provisions of the Library Services and Technology Act as administered by State Library of Iowa.