Mounting opposition to America’s new black opera
NewsA petition is doing the rounds, calling for the cancellation of the world premiere of Emmett Till, A New American Opera .
The work, by Black composer Mary D. Watkins, is a setting of Emmett, Down in My Heart, by a white playwright, Clare Coss.
Opponents say: ‘Clare Coss has creatively centered her white guilt by using this play to make the racially motivated brutal torture and murder of a 14-year-old child about her white self and her white feelings.’
The premiere is due at John Jay College Theatre on March 23.
Almost 10,000 have signed the petition to take it down.
as they say, any publicity is good publicity
There are no words. No printable ones anyway
Greeeat. And I’m involved in this gig. Would be a shame for this to be cancelled over such am absolutely ridiculous issue. The composer is black, the librettist is white, and Tania Leon is conducting, and it’s being produced by Harlem Chamber Music What’s the damn problem!
Imagine the pent up rage some of this crowd must have over, say, the Rolling Stones or Eric Clapton. Those guys are all about cultural appropriation and the white-self. Don’t get them started on that!
I should add, this production has obviously been workshopped, discussed and thought about for thousands of hours. I’m sure discussions have been had. This change.org petition says absolutely NOTHING about the composer of the opera, the conductor, or the producing organization. It’s an ignorant knee-jerk reaction piece.
And no one’s seen it yet !
The petition was written and organized by a college student. ‘Nuff said.
No one is more presumptuous, pandering and patronizing than well-meaning liberal White people. It’s nauseating.
Any work of art with Emmet Till is, quite unfortunately, a lightening rod for many on both sides. Just four years ago a painting (quite good) from the Whitney Biennial was removed for its appropriation of a photograph of young Emmet in his coffin.
Why punish Mary Watkins, a brilliant composer? Clearly many of the petitioners have no clear idea what they’re signing. It is an OPERA, not a play.
Which side is trying to cancel? The anti-appropriationists or the anti-CRTs?
Cancel ! Cancel ! Canceeelllll !
Dear NL,
Yet another to get the race-trolls typing!!
“race-trolls”! Mote and eye come to mind.
The censorship of the “open-minded” left on display once again.
Oh dear, we have gone mad.
Woke gone crazy.
has anyone actually read the libretto to determine the truth of this? certainly the black composer had no problem with it
No. That’s what’s so ridiculous about this protest.
Truth hurts.
Perhaps I am naive, but I think that white guilt is quite a legitimate topic for a work of the imagination.
I have also been raised and educated to believe that art is a way for people to explore ideas and a build bridges and communicate.
I do realise that the only people prohibited from writing about those unlike themselves are white people, the only ones in history with anything at all to be guilty about.
So we will not be deprived of anything written about anything by non-whites.
Unless the prohibition to stick to one’s own world does indeed become universal, and all we can look forward to is autobiographies, and only those about people who do not interact with anyone outside their own limited frames.
This story could well tell an interesting perspective on a terrible event. It will be instructive to see what John Jay College does in response to this petition. (Three guesses).
Give me an &**ing break.
America’s predominant culture is cancel culture.
Indeed: on both extremes of the socio-political spectrum.
Composer and librettist respond here:
https://playbill.com/article/more-than-8-000-sign-change-org-petition-to-cancel-planned-production-of-emmett-till-opera-its-authors-respond
I’m not sure where the author of the petition got her information, but it seems she’s simply wrong about several aspects of the production. Social media misinformation is not only relegated to covid and politics.
You are absolutely right, and it seems like Newsweek tried to contact Mya Bishop to get her opinion in its own article that helps clear up some of the misinformation:
https://www.newsweek.com/petition-calls-cancel-disgraceful-opera-based-murder-emmett-till-1689652
What a colossal waste of time and good for these two women to produce a musical work from just one of the many prospectives that exists or existed during that national tragedy. Write your own opera if you don’t like the origins of this work but do not impinge upon their right to produce art just because of their race or ethnicity- get a life, you don’t have to like it at and you have a right to protest, go ahead but don’t make assumptions about a person’s actions and their intent or their thoughts behind their work and pass it off as fact-it isn’t.
Excellent points. Obviously, telling the story from a racist prospective would be wrong and deeply offensive, but there are a number of legitimate ways this tragic story (and others like it) can be told. You’re absolutely right that those who are unhappy are free to write their own opera.
Although the situation was a bit different, Langston Hughes wrote the lyrics for Kurt Weill’s Street Scene, with its mostly white cast of characters, in 1946. It was unusual at the time, but Weill admired Hughes and was justifiably pleased with the result.
Let the performance proceed and then have discussions after.
What a good way to ruin a good performance…
The woke eating their own. It is between tragic and absurd. 80 years ago it was about real racism. Now it is about milking every grain of “white guilt” from the fools who gave us a senile stooge as the “American” “leader,” following a strange, to put it mildly, banana republic-like “election”.
Hungrier than hyenas, an entire industry of Race Guilt charlatans get rich by using Emmett Till, MLK and other tragic historical figures to pad their own greedy pockets. Given the thinning of actual racism, the racial hoax industry is more developed than ever – see Crystal Gail Mangum, Tawana Brawley, Jussie Smollett… and so many others.
…And when a poor “ally” like Clare Coss tries to make herself an honest buck based on somebody else’s sob story, her skin color will never be either forgotten or forgiven.
“Anti-racism” is the most genuinely racist movement in the US since KKK.
You’re bringing Tawana Brawley into this? That happened 35 years ago.
Naked racism. Must cancel Porgy & Bess, then. Not only a white, but a Jew! writing about blacks?! Can’t allow that.
From the petition, started by one Mya Bishop:
“If we are going to tell the story of Emmett Till, it should only be from a Black perspective, a Black writer, and permission and approval from Till’s family.”
I can’t help but wonder why Mya Bishop feels that she should be the arbiter of who may or may not “tell the story” of whatever they choose to.
Let the opera go on, then form your opinions.
That petition is really crazy.
The obvious question too is, why doesn’t someone else write their own play instead of trying to censor this one?
That ‘petition’ is an excellent example of pure racism, under the cover of the Great Awokening.
I suspect the petition came about because of the social-media agitation of Black Opera Alliance, which cannot have seen the work performed. I wonder whether anyone connected with BOA has actually read or seen the play by Clare Coss that forms the source material.
This puts Black Opera Alliance in the position of trying to suppress the work of Coss’s collaborator, composer Mary D. Watkins, whose response reads in part: “It is very disturbing that people are condemning this piece without having seen or heard it. They have jumped on the fact that the playwright is white and assumed all kinds of things about the content of the play. Even though there are many artists of color involved in this project, the critics are assuming that we have had no impact on the final shape of the piece and that the playwright has somehow forced all of us to tell her story. It is an insult to me as a Black woman and to the company members who are African-American.”
Given BOA’s history of a patriarchal slant (typified by its position on the Denyce Graves/Daniel Roumain/Tulsa Opera controversy of a year ago), I cannot say I’m surprised.
Also not surprising is the social-media response, with young white racial-justice advocates piling on in the slanders and expressions of contempt toward an 87-year-old woman who in her time was their counterpart. Coss was an LSU student at the time of the Till murder. I don’t have reason to doubt her when she says it affected her deeply.
I hope the work premieres successfully. I haven’t heard a note of it, but I don’t like to see creative work stifled before it’s had a chance, by people making judgments based on assumptions and, at best, a précis.
Wasn’t this approach of making up one’s mind in advance, then trying to prevent anyone else from seeing something, once the province of the fundamentalist right wing with material such as the film The Last Temptation of Christ? Now the performatively “woke” left takes a page from that playbook, proving that recourse to such tactics is about fanaticism and closed-mindedness rather than ideology.
I would be concerned about whether the truth would be told, that the white woman who accused Till admitted she lied. Nothing was ever done to her. Also is there anything in there about the white men who killed Till and were not convicted by a white Jury? And will they use real names? I can see how this subject could be a deeply moving piece. Apparently the FBI could not prove that she lied, so they closed the case. I can see how a white fictional character could be disturbing and I would like to know if the family is involved and approves.
I will not attend opera with a black Tosca or Violetta!
I saw Shirley Verrett as Tosca, and she wore stage make-up and was convincing, even thrilling.
i only like Opera from the Romantic Movement. Get it?
if the song is hip hop the singer should be back.
Here is information about the opera:
https://marydwatkins.com/operas/emmett-till-the-opera/
Here’s more music by Watkins:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=by0xgq_Pu8k&t=3s
https://www.womenarts.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/We_Lost_Dorothy1.mp3
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R3khFBg7bj0
It’s social justice music, and nothing wrong with it, and entirely sex- and colourless in the best sense of the word. So, it should be protected from woke.
Such racism. When is the Black community going to confront their own racism? I bet nearly all the signatures are from “woke” White people.
How many critics have seen it?