Breaking the racial barrier

PREPARE FOR LIFTOFF A 1946 Madama Butterfly at New York City Opera helped to launch Camilla Williams, left, on an international career.

Photograph: Fred Fehl

For New York City Opera, this has been a season of expectation and turmoil as a future under Gerard Mortier’s leadership slipped away due to budget constraints. Last week the company announced that George Steel, who left Columbia University’s Miller Theatre in October to take over at the Dallas Opera, would be returning to New York as City Opera’s general manager and artistic director.

But even as NYCO has coped with uncertainty, it has also celebrated its crucial mission and substantial achievements with concerts, lectures and other events. The latest initiative, “Black History at City Opera,” celebrates the rich cultural legacy of African-American musicians and the role they have played in this company. Founded as “The People’s Opera” in 1944, NYCO pioneered color-blind casting within a year of its opening, when baritone Todd Duncan, who originated Gershwin’s Porgy on Broadway, became the first black opera singer ever to appear with an otherwise all-white cast as Tonio in City Opera’s 1945 Pagliacci. A year later, soprano Camilla Williams, starring in a production of Madama Butterfly, became the first black singer under permanent contract to a national troupe. City Opera was also the first major American company to mount a work by an African-American composer: 1949’s Troubled Island, by William Grant Still.

“I contacted the Schomburg Center with the black history idea, which I’ve had a long time,” says NYCO dramaturg Cori Ellison. “They were so enthusiastic that one event became three.” In “I’m on My Way,” which opens the series on Wednesday 28, Ellison and guests discuss a legacy that includes early appearances by future stars such as Reri Grist, Shirley Verrett and Willard White. Harlem-based troupe Opera Noire will perform selections from Anthony Davis’s X: The Life and Times of Malcolm X, Richard Danielpour’s Margaret Garner and additional works.

“One Fine Day,” on February 11, honors Williams, 89, a pathbreaking civil-rights veteran and a warm, inspiring raconteur. “I’m very excited and grateful,” she says. “Going out on that City Opera stage felt like a miracle. And now—well, I’ve broken down some barriers myself, but to see a nice young man with a mind, with reason, step into the White House… God is good.” The singer’s widely acclaimed Butterfly led to further company appearances as Aida, Nedda and Mimì, as well as onto international stages. She was the first black singer asked to tour Africa by the U.S. State Department, and the first black professor on Indiana University’s legendary voice faculty. At Martin Luther King Jr.’s request, Williams graced both the March on Washington and his Nobel Prize ceremony. Video footage and live music are promised.

Completing the series on March 31, Opera Noire will offer a concert performance of Still’s opera, about Haiti’s 1791 slave rebellion. Langston Hughes furnished the libretto; George Balanchine choreographed the premiere in 1949. The cast, though predominately white performers in blackface, included Robert McFerrin, later to become the first black male singer at the Metropolitan Opera (and the father of popular singer Bobby McFerrin). Taken together, these events suggest that while City Opera’s immediate future is as yet unclear, it would do well to uphold the groundbreaking work of years past.

“Black History at City Opera” opens at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture Wed 28.

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