Opera Lafayette Premieres Dédé’s ‘Morgiane’
By • February 18, 2025 0 312
The week before Abraham Lincoln’s and Frederick Douglass’s birthdays, Opera Lafayette — best known under founder Ryan Brown for performances of French baroque works — presented the world premiere of Edmond Dédé’s “Morgiane” in three venues: the Lincoln Theatre on U Street NW in Washington, D.C.; Jazz at Lincoln Center’s Rose Hall in Manhattan; and the University of Maryland’s Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center in College Park.
The Black History Month timing was significant: composed in 1887, “Morgiane” is believed to be the earliest surviving opera by a Black American. Presenting it in the two “Lincoln” venues, linked to jazz, was significant too, since Dédé was from New Orleans.
Though the genre had yet to be born, Givonna Joseph, artistic director of New Orleans-based OperaCréole, made the connection to jazz in her pre-show remarks. When Blacks in the Crescent City’s musical melting pot were “kicked out of opera orchestras” by late 19th-century Jim Crow laws, they went to play in “the brothels of Storyville.” Coloratura singing, in Joseph’s telling, fed into jazz improvisation, Louis Armstrong style.
The French roots of Louisiana (named for Louis XIV) and New Orleans (named for the city of Orléans) and France’s relative freedom from racial oppression were factors in Dédé’s choice of destination for advanced musical training. A free person of color born in 1827, he studied violin and played in New Orleans orchestras while working in a cigar factory. In 1855, funds were raised to send him to Paris, where he took lessons with Conservatoire faculty members and audited classes.
Late in 1861, Dédé moved to the southwest port city of Bordeaux, holding successive positions over three decades at the Grand Théâtre (built in 1780 and still the home of the Opéra National and Ballet National de Bordeaux); the “café-concert” L’Alcazar (now luxury apartments); and the Folies Bordelaises (current status unclear).
A rehearsal pianist, coach and conductor, Dédé churned out songs, dance music, ballet scores, overtures and operettas, but composed just one opera, unperformed in his lifetime and, after his death in 1901, for another 124 years: the four-act, Arabian Nights-inspired “Morgiane, ou, Le Sultan d’Ispahan.”
The February performances were concert style — the singers in the lead roles behind music stands — with Opera Lafayette Director Designate Patrick Dupre Quigley conducting a 48-member period orchestra and OperaCréole’s 16-member chorus. An excerpted production with the Louisiana Philharmonic was presented in January in New Orleans at the Cathedral-Basilica of St. Louis, King of France, where Dédé was baptized.
Joining Joseph onstage prior to the Feb. 5 Jazz at Lincoln Center performance was musicologist Candace Bailey of North Carolina Central University, who is writing a book about the opera. The 550-page score of “Morgiane,” on view at the Folger Shakespeare Library through March 2, was identified years after Harvard’s Houghton Library acquired it in a collection of music manuscripts.
Asked to describe “Morgiane” in terms of familiar operas, Bailey offered: “[Jules] Massenet with a dash of ‘Marriage of Figaro.’” By the 1880s, grand opera — large-scale works with a chorus and a ballet and without spoken dialogue, such as Rossini’s “William Tell” and Meyerbeer’s “The Huguenots,” which Dédé probably heard at the Grand Théâtre — had long been out of fashion. In vogue: less stately operas, like Bizet’s “Carmen” (though its 1875 premiere was unsuccessful), and the operettas of Offenbach.
According to Bailey, this departure from the conventions of earlier decades gave Dédé “the opportunity to add some of his own experiences into the opera itself,” that is, his expertise in writing for music halls, cabarets and dance halls.
Though the opera includes dance sequences, with “exotic rhythms” per Bailey, these were omitted from the current production. In a program note, Quigley writes: “More than 100 people associated with OperaCréole and Opera Lafayette contributed to restoring the music you will hear today,” adding that it is “the first, but almost certainly not the final, version of ‘Morgiane.’” The plan is to present a fully staged performance in 2027, Dédé’s bicentennial year.
So how did it sound, apart from its historical interest and importance and the “decade-long quest to bring the opera to life” (Quigley’s words)?
I found “Morgiane” delightful, partly because telling a “grand opera” story using an often lighthearted musical idiom, with waltz-like sections (though the score was through-composed, with a full chorus and skillful instrumental writing), was so unusual. This hybrid approach, and Dédé’s inventive orchestration, enlivened the score with unexpected variety.
As with many opera librettos, that of “Morgiane,” by Louis Brunet — who seems to have been, like Dédé, a Bordeaux resident of color — requires suspension of disbelief. And even if one accepts the fantastic Arabic-Persian narrative, it’s hard to take the big reveal seriously when the sung text is as follows (English translation from supertitles):
Morgiane (Amine’s mother): “My Lord, listen to me. The girl you claim to love and want to marry …”
Sultan: “What?”
Morgiane: “She is your daughter.”
Chorus: “His daughter?”
Amine: “This thought makes me shudder.”
Hagi Hassan (Amine’s adoptive father): “I remain confused.”
In Act 1, Amine’s kidnapping by Sultan Korouschah’s henchmen, led by Beher, on her charmingly festive wedding day didn’t seem all that frightening. Act 2, set in the Ispahan market, with the chorus as vendors, vocally interacting with the leads, was a winner. The most successful act may have been Act 3, in which Amine refuses to submit (Sultan: “A smile, a single word from your pretty mouth.” Amine, now in princess garb: “Remove the conquest of me for my mouth will forever say No.”). Attempting to rescue her posing as entertainers, her parents and fiancé, Ali, sing a trio about a stolen sheep. This works beautifully until Ali loses his temper (also a highlight) and they are condemned to death.
The climactic revelation (see above) comes in Act 4, followed by a somewhat anticlimactic happy ending (Sultan: “Throughout the empire, let it be known that I have granted forgiveness.”).
The cast — soprano Nicole Cabell as Amine, tenor Chauncey Packer as Ali, baritone Joshua Conyers as Hagi Hassan, soprano Mary Elizabeth Williams as Morgiane, bass-baritone Jonathan Woody as Beher and bass Kenneth Kellogg as Sultan Korouschah — did a solid job with the challenging, unfamiliar score. The standouts throughout were Williams and Kellogg, but the others rose to the occasion in their key arias, sometimes in striking a cappella passages.
Cast and chorus were appealingly costumed — Morgiane in turquoise with a light blue headdress — by Amy Amos and OperaCréole co-founders Joseph and her daughter Aria Mason.
