8 June 2026, 9:00 PDT, 12:00 EST; 18:00  CET

This is a time of fracture. Conflict, economic precarity, political instability, and environmental breakdown are driving people apart. Around the globe, fear and instincts of self-preservation have prompted nations to retreat into isolationist projects. As a result, the world has become, yet again, a place of hard borders. What does this mean for opera, an art form that relies on mobility, integration, and exchange? 

In this panel discussion, the Black Opera Research Network invites scholars and practitioners to reflect on opera’s relationship with borders. Opera singer and director Joseph Oparamanuike, composer Hector Armienta, and music director Pablo Duque will join Dr Hilde Roos to discuss the ways in which opera may both destabilise and reinforce inherited distinctions between race, nation, class, and genre. Possible talking points may include, but won’t be limited to:

• • The impact of hardened borders on opera practitioners’ work
  • Opera as a vehicle for cultural and racial reconciliation
  • Performance beyond the borders of the opera house
  • Opera’s role in identifying and preserving nationalist cultural narratives
  • Intermediality and experimentation as metaphors for border-crossing

BORN working team member Juliana M. Pistorius’s monograph, Postcolonial Opera: William Kentridge and the Unbounded Work of Art, has been published by Oxford University Press. Postcolonial Opera examines the social and political role of opera in the postcolony. Taking as a starting point the experimental theatre works of South African artist William Kentridge, the book investigates contemporary opera’s capacity to process the troubled histories that haunt post- and decolonial societies.

Rorotoko interviewed Pistorius about her book. Read the interview here.

In this newsletter:

– Journal of Black Opera and Music Theatre

– An opera about Paul Robeson

– Community highlights

– New publications

The BORN Black Opera Critical Editions Advisory Board seeks proposals for new critical editions of operas by Black composers and/or librettists.

In January 2025, OperaCréole and Opera Lafayette collaborated to perform Edmond Dédé’s Morgaine, ou, Le sultan d’Ispahan (1887), the oldest known opera by a Black American composer to have a surviving complete score. This historic performance took years to come to fruition in part because there was no modern score. The opera companies in partnership with musicologists created an edited score and parts from the only extant archival source. Few opera companies have the time or resources to undertake such a big project. Instead, it is up to music studies specialists to supply the critical editions needed to study and to perform works that do not have readily available scores. The lack of edited scores is one of the principal impediments to the study and performance of operas by historic Black composers and librettists. The rich operatic tradition is beggared by the loss of Black voices. Providing critically sound and accessible scores of Black operas is the fastest way to make long-lasting change by expanding the canon to become more representative of all the people who have participated in and shaped the genre.

The Black Opera Research Network (BORN) is establishing the Black Opera Critical Editions to begin to address the lack of published scores by composers and librettists from the African diaspora. BORN is an international organization that explores opera both inside and outside of the traditional operatic and scholarly institutions in the West. BORN’s diverse membership includes specialists in opera performance and scholarship living on three continents. We seek to perform reparative work within the study and performance of opera by including the output of Black composers and librettists in the historical record and by supporting operatic performance and scholarship taking place outside of major European and American research and musical institutions. As part of our mission, BORN encourages the study and performance of operas by historic Black composers and librettists.

The Board will provide as much support to selected volume editors as possible including securing publication contracts and serving as recommenders for grant applications. We are also actively seeking funding as an organization to provide technological, editorial, copyediting, and other kinds of assistance to volume editors. Operas may originate from any country or time period. Preference for selection will be given to operas in which composers or librettists are deceased or at the end of their careers when their work is unlikely to find a publisher, and for which there is currently no published score.

The Advisory Board understands that these kinds of projects take years to complete. Therefore, each volume editor will construct a timeline for completion of their edition in consultation with the Advisory Board. The final form of every volume will be determined by the available manuscript sources, the amount of reconstruction that might be needed, and other factors. As much as possible, editors should expect to prepare a full score from which individual instrumental and vocal parts could be extracted, a vocal/piano score, a translation of the libretto into English for texts in another language, and a short critical essay with biographical information on the opera’s creative team, an analytical discussion of the opera, the historical and cultural context of the work, information on the manuscript source(s), and an explanation of the editorial process and decisions. The final editions should be suitable for both performance and scholarly use. A-R Editions in the United States is interested in publishing the Black Opera Critical Editions in print and as part of their digital subscription service. Editors should expect to generally follow A-R Editions’ Style Guide, but the demands of individual scores and the editors’ preferences will determine final editorial policies for each volume.

The proposal should explain the history of the opera and its creative team, the rationale for an edition, the location and the condition of available sources for the edition, and the current stage of the project. Preference will be given to editions that are currently in preparation, but we will consider projects at any stage. Advisory Board members are happy to answer questions and consult with prospective editors prior to the submission of a proposal.

Please submit a proposal of 500 words on or before 15 July 2025, using this Google Form.

The Black Opera Critical Editions Advisory Board consists of Naomi André (UNC-Chapel Hill), Michael Mohammed (San Francisco Conservatory), Hilde Roos (Stellenbosch University), Louise Toppin (University of Michigan), and Kristen M. Turner (Chair of the Board). Please address questions to Kristen Turner at blackoperaresearchnetwork@gmail.com

In this newsletter:

– BORN at SASRIM 2024

– New operas in the US and South Africa

– Community news

BORN working team member Wayne Muller has released his first monograph, Opera in Cape Town: The Critic’s Voice (Stellenbosch, 2023). We caught up with him to find out more about this exciting publication.

WM: The book essentially traces how newspaper critics penned the developments in opera in Cape Town from the early 1990s into the democratic post-apartheid era. It is therefore about a public conversation documented in newspapers and is concerned with the intersection of and interplay between opera as an art form and the socio-political shifts in the country during this period. So, it is about how the socio-political transformation impacted the transformation of opera, and how opera in turn became a device that is politically employed as an exemplar of the country’s transformation. This is captured thematically in the book through what opera critics and arts journalists had written about the performance of opera in Cape Town. The main themes reflect on how Western European opera (particularly 19^th-century repertoire) remained at the pinnacle of operatic expression, how this standard repertoire was adapted to make it relevant to a local audience by changing the setting, music, themes and language. This eventually culminated in what I have called a distinctly South African operatic expression and/or aesthetic that remains challenging to define. 

BORN: The historical period 1985-present is a time of great political, social, and cultural change in South Africa, as the country shifted through several states of emergency, the demise of the apartheid regime, political transition, truth and reconciliation, and recently, arguably, the collapse of the democratic ideal. The purpose and meaning of opera also changed during this time. To what extent do you think the country’s socio-political transformations played out on the operatic stage? What was the role of opera critics in this context?

WM: At the start of the democratic era, opera was seen as an elitist, Eurocentric art form with no place or relevance in the country. Judging from the reportage at the time it seems there had, at least from those in the industry, been a realisation that if opera were to survive it had to reflect the South Africa of the day and not an historical European context. Opera’s survival and relevance became reliant on not only finding a place in the new socio-political context but how it engages with and is representative of the societal transformation. While adaptations of standard Western European repertoire aided in opera becoming relevant, the composition of new South African operas had the potential to really portray the new nationhood. Since 1995, almost 20 South African operas had been staged in Cape Town, and all address in some way our grappling with this new nationhood. So, the stories that have been told through the medium of opera aimed to foreground, for example, unacknowledged Black histories and the biographies of those vilified during apartheid. I believe in this way South African opera also became a means of restitution. None of these operas were aimed at mere entertainment, rather they relate stories (and music) that address our colonial and apartheid pasts and a future nationhood. In writing about these changes on the operatic stage, critics negotiated with their (mostly white) readers an “acceptance” of the evolving operatic aesthetic in that they reviewed these works as representative of the new democracy that was being sought. Their writing, for instance, grappled with the then contemporary trend of merging Western and Indigenous (called “African”) musical styles and instruments into the performance of standard repertoire works. So, much like political journalists at the time, opera critics played a role in creating an understanding of the changing operatic aesthetics within the context of a socio-politically transforming country.

BORN: You work as a critic yourself, and you refer to your own reviews in the book. How has your experience as an opera critic influenced your work as a scholar?

WM: My curiosity about the value of journalistic art criticism was what led me to the scholarly work on opera. Over the years of writing opera reviews, I have noticed these themes that are identified in the book, and I have written much about opera and its relevance in our country. So, my scholarly work was initiated by the things I have tried to address in my newspaper reviews and reflections on what opera means in our context. But in doing the scholarly work, other themes emerged and have since informed the way in which I now look at opera on the stage as a critic.

BORN: The South African context is fraught, not only because of its political history, but also because of the range of cultural identities and historical backgrounds activated both on stage and in the (listening and reading) audience. As a result, things may land quite differently for different publics. Occasionally, things may seem illegible to certain publics, while deeply meaningful to others. How do critics adjust for this? How do you, as a scholar, accommodate the indeterminacy of aesthetic and cultural meanings in your work?

WM: The media is segmented in that certain media speak to certain reader markets. It is the critic’s job to understand their readers’ world in order to write for their readers. So, yes, there are different publics, but most critics engage through a particular product with a particular public, one which they should know intimately, and which is distinct from another. For the critic, it depends therefore on who they are talking to in their writing. In the book one sees this in the differences in content and interpretation in reviews written about, for instance, the first local performance of Porgy and Bess in 1996 or South African composer Roelof Temmingh’s Enoch, Prophet of God in 1995 for the perceived liberal English press and, on the other hand, the perceived conservative Afrikaans press. As a scholar, and specifically for this study, I was guided by the writings of these critics from diverse backgrounds and focused on interpreting what those writings conveyed as best I could – it was in the use of words and phrases and cultural references. I think one accommodates this by acknowledging that these remain merely singular perspectives on aesthetic and cultural meanings in a particular cultural context.

BORN: Your cover image is from South African composer Hans Huyssen’s opera, Masque (2005). Is Huyssen’s opera a central case study in your book? Do you view this work as representative of a larger South African opera aesthetic?

BORN: Given current sensitivities regarding Indigenous representation and the sexualisation of the Black female body, the photo from Masque may appear a controversial choice for a book cover. What motivated your selection of this image? Does it reflect something of current sensibilities towards opera (or performance more generally) in South Africa?

WM: My reason for selecting this image relates to the previous question, in that the photograph represents what critics opined is the new South African operatic aesthetic at a particular time. In 2005, that was the image that was sought in opera, but today we might consider it a stereotypical portrayal of Indigenous representation. The book addresses the portrayal of Blackness and Black women (in reviews of local operas but also in a work such as Verdi’s Aida) in the context of what critics and audiences believed an “African” opera would be, both in its narrative and mise-en-scène. Yes, it could certainly be viewed as a controversial choice (possibly provocative), but in considering it, I believed that the image captures an aesthetics that was sought at that time, and that is what this book is about. Despite our sensitivities today, images such as these (or rather, what this image represents) are still seen on the South African stage, not only in opera but often in theatre.

BORN: In the preface, you mention that you’re interested in using your work to think about the future of opera in post-apartheid South Africa. What do you think this future holds?

WM: The book paints a picture of opera during an era in which South Africans grappled with how the arts landscape should take shape in the future. There had been a discomfort with Western European art forms amidst a restorative aim of giving Indigenous art forms a rightful place within that landscape. In opera, I believe that during the first 20 years of democracy we have tried to find our operatic voice through experimenting and searching for a South African operatic aesthetic and how it should represent our nationhood. Now, after 30 years of democracy, we have overcome our discomfort. When one looks at the repertoire performed in Cape Town over the past five years, you will notice a move (back) towards the standard Western European repertoire, but I think we are comfortable with that now. I believe we have entered a future in which opera is just opera, and it is what we as South Africans do.