Dreaming in Ensemble, Caplan

[[Description]]The inauguration of a “golden age” in Black opera is often dated to 1955, when Marian Anderson became the first Black singer to perform in a leading role at New York’s Metropolitan Opera. Yet Anderson’s debut was preceded by a rich Black operatic tradition that developed in the first half of the twentieth century. Lucy Caplan tells the stories of the Black composers, performers, critics, teachers and students who created this vibrant opera culture, even as they were excluded from the genre’s most prominent institutions. Their movement, which flourished alongside the Harlem Renaissance, redefined opera as a wellspring of aesthetic innovation, sociality and antiracist activism.Caplan argues that Black opera in the early twentieth century had decidedly countercultural ambitions. In opera’s sonic grandeur and dramatic maximalism, artists found creative resources for expressing the complexity of Black life. The protagonists of this story include composers Harry Lawrence Freem