Events will be added to the website as soon as her schedule is finalized. Please check back!
Naomi André is a professor in the Department of Afroamerican and African Studies, Women’s Studies, and the Residential College at the University of Michigan. She received her B.A. from Barnard College and M.A. and Ph.D. from Harvard University. Her research focuses on opera and issues surrounding gender, voice, and race in the US, Europe, and South Africa. Her publications include topics on Italian opera, Schoenberg, women composers, and teaching opera in prisons. Her book, Black Opera: History, Power, Engagement (University of Illinois Press, 2018) won the Lowens Book Award from the Society for American Music. Her earlier books include Voicing Gender: Castrati, Travesti, and the Second Woman in Early Nineteenth-Century Italian Opera (2006) and Blackness in Opera (2012, co-edited collection). She has edited and contributed to clusters of articles in African Studies and the Journal of the Society for American Music. Currently she is a co-editor for the essay collection African Performance Arts and Political Acts (University of Michigan Press, forthcoming in 2021). She is the inaugural Scholar in Residence at the Seattle Opera.
Conversation with André led by Anthony Kelley: On Black Music and the Operatic Tradition: Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess Reconsidered
Wednesday, March 2, 2022
12:00-1:15PM
Biddle 086
Considered one of the most significant American operatic works, George Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess has been a staple of programming for opera companies since its creation in 1935. But this opera, while praised for its contagious melodic content and requirements of Black casting, has also encountered sharp criticism for its handling of matters involving racial stereotypes, dialect, and cultural appropriation.
What issues persist around the programming of one of Gershwin’s best known works, and are there best practices and circumstances that might allow for appropriate framing of the work in the 21st century and beyond? Join an expert on the topic, musicologist Naomi André [author, Black Opera: History, Power, Engagement] in conversation with Duke faculty member, Anthony Kelley [co-convener of Duke University’s Black Music and the Soul of America humanities lab] as they reconsider Gershwin’s opera and other related topics on Black Music and the operatic tradition.
Lecture: “Engaging Opera as Popular Culture and Social Justice”
March 3, 4:30pm
Mary Biddle Duke Music Building, Room 104
Free and Open to the Public
Abstract: In this talk I outline some of the larger frameworks from my book Black Opera: History, Power, Engagement (2018) and take them further to include a quick mention of Beyoncé’s Homecoming (2018), and three operas on Black topics that debuted the summer of 2019 (Terence Blanchard and Kasi Lemmons, Fire Shut Up in My Bones, Opera Theater of St. Louis and then the Metropolitan Opera in NYC 2022; Anthony Davis and Richard Wesley, The Central Park Five, Long Beach Opera; and Jeanine Tesori and Tazewell Thompson, Blue, Glimmerglass Festival). I quickly contextualize Fire Shut Up in My Bones and The Central Park Five and then spend the most time with Blue. I have been fortunate to see all three operas and got to know Tesori and Thompson through several panels in the Breaking Glass series (run by Glimmerglass Opera Festival). From the legacy of minstrelsy and the frequent negative portrayal of Blackness in opera, this talk outlines a shadow history and explores how opera can be relevant for today and a space of liberation.
