Arriving with any certainty at historical facts can prove to be a slippery quest. The earliest accounts of opera being performed in America date back to the middle part of the 18th century.
Life then was still pretty hard, and in states like New England, the Pilgrim Fathers voiced their displeasure at any attempts to perform music without a direct liturgical focus.
John Gay’s opera called The Beggars’ Opera is thought to have received one of its first American performances in New York around 1750. This sparked a modest interest in the genre through touring operatic groups who would perform what might be best described as a medley of popular arias.
Opera Evolution in 20th-Century America
Of vital importance to American cultural history are what were known as Ballad Operas. These kinds of opera stemmed from their English counterparts. Songs were interspersed with dialogue and often dances, closer perhaps to our present-day musicals than operas.
The first example of an American Ballad Opera is Samuel Adler’s grandly titled The Disappointment or The Force of Credulity. It received its first performance in 1762 in Philadelphia to a somewhat tempered response.
It wasn’t until much further on in American history that we encountered the first American opera. An extraordinary man named William Henry Fry (1813-1864) was a journalist, composer, and major fan of the Italian Bel Canto opera.
He had the opportunity to hear and comment on visiting operatic groups from Europe that perhaps drew him to composing his operas.
The first opera he composed was in 1841 called Aurelia the Vestal, but the production of the opera seemed doomed to failure, and Fry turned his focus towards a new work, Leonora. This work was completed in 1845 and met with considerable success.
It seems that despite several valiant attempts to secure Grand Opera into American culture, it didn’t truly take a foothold until the next century. Whilst visiting opera companies presented European opera to the public and were greeted warmly, composers of successful American opera were few.
Even Fry’s attempts to persuade the Paris Opera to produce Leonora failed, a subject that he regularly wrote about in his columns.
The Role of Scott Joplin and African-American Opera
Scott Joplin is perhaps better known as the King or Father of Ragtime. This is an accolade that is well-deserved, but Joplin’s tremendous contribution to American cultural history stretches far further than his delectable collection of rags.
In 1910, Joplin completed an opera that would be truly groundbreaking. In many ways, it marks a transition point from European-styled opera attempts towards a genuinely new genre of American opera.
Treemonisha was finished and self-published in 1911. Joplin sent a copy to the American Musician and Art Journal and received a well-deserved, glowing review.
Treemonisha was unusual in that it celebrated African-American culture and gave a clear message about the importance of education to the African-American community as a way out of poverty.
Sadly, Joplin never heard a fully staged version of his opera, and as far as we currently know, the original orchestration is lost. Joplin’s voyage into the operatic world began as early as 1901 with A Guest of Honour, which took for its narrative the famous Roosevelt dinner he hosted for the Civil Rights Movement.
Treemonisha had to wait until 1975 to receive its first professional performance, which was greeted with unanimous acclaim.
Challenges in the Development of American Opera
American opera was struggling to gain ground. Much of the criticism levelled at operatic work was that it was derivative. Critics were harsher still, claiming that the American composers couldn’t write a good melody even if their lives depended on it.
The Metropolitan Opera decided to offer a sizable $10,000 for a composer to create a new opera for the Met. The winner of the esteemed competition was composer and organist Horatio Parker. Mona was the title of the three-act opera that premiered on 14 March 1912.
Parker’s opera set in motion an emerging thirst for authentic American opera. The Met continued to present premieres of new operas, but many were still heavily reliant on the music of late-Romantic German composers.
Other operas such as Victor Herbert’s Madeleine (1914), Henry Hadley’s Cleopatra’s Night (1920), and John Hugo’s The Temple Dancer (1918) still failed to adequately capture the American audiences. Many of these new operas opened and closed on the same night.
Deems Taylor’s (1885-1966) The King’s Henchman of 1927 together with his opera Peter Ibbetson (1931) were perhaps the only two examples of American opera that proved to be successful during this period.
Taylor was a composer and a critic, well-placed one might argue, to know how to tap into the operatic world and come out with a positive response. Sadly, even though these two operas received numerous performances, especially Peter Ibbetson, they had fallen into obscurity within a decade.
The Rise of Significant Works in American Opera
As the 20th century gathers momentum, we find that America is finally embracing opera more warmly. A work of great merit and cultural significance in my opinion is George Gershwin’s Porgy & Bess (1935).
Like some of the operas that had come before, Gershwin’s work sought to dispel the cultural divide and challenge the racism that dominated American society at this time. Gershwin seamlessly fuses the classical world of music with gospel and jazz to create one of the most stunning operas of its time.
Porgy & Bess contains some of the best-known songs contained in any operatic composition, including Summertime, Bess, You Is My Woman Now, and Ain’t Necessarily So.
It is a three-act opera designed for a black cast. Gershwin struggled to assemble the cast he wanted, as it was challenging to find that ideal blend of operatic and jazz-versed singers.
There was then major resistance from Broadway producers whom Gershwin had worked with before, accepting the concept of a black opera. In the end, the opera received nearly 150 performances but was met with mixed responses from the African-American community.
Continued Growth and Evolution of American Opera
American opera was, despite setbacks, now on its way and gaining ground. Composers such as Aaron Copland joined the ranks of the operatic. Copland only composed one opera, but it is of evolutionary significance.
The Tender Land (1952-54) was composed for an NNC Television operatic workshop. This in itself was a unique venture. The opera was inspired by the work of Walker Evans and James Agee, a photographer and author respectively.
As much as these artists provided the backdrop for the plot, the opera was not a great success, with critics noting that the characters and narrative were both weak. Copland revised the opera quite extensively, and it received credible performances, although it has never gained the popularity that perhaps it should.
One of the foremost opera composers currently active in the USA is John Adams. Adams is a genuine innovator and has composed extensively across many contemporary forms from operas to concertos and symphonic works.
His operatic output is prolific. To date, Adams has completed nine operatic and staged works, with the first being Nixon In China (1987). (El Nino (2000) and The Gospel According to the Other Mary (2013) are oratorios as opposed to operas).
Adams’s most recent operatic offering is Anthony & Cleopatra (2022), which throws these Shakespearian characters into 1930s America full of Art Deco and silk gowns.
It is divided into two acts with a libretto devised by the composer. The reception of the initial performances was mixed but almost understandable after the incredible but justified success of Dr. Atomic in 2005, which seems more relevant each day.
Philip Glass is another highly important composer still writing in the USA today. His collection of operas spans most of his working life and has been consistently diverse, provocative, and extraordinary.
Einstein on the Beach (1975) was Glass’s first collaboration with Robert Wilson that places the iconic Einstein in full focus as a humanist, musician, and ultimately the man who paved the way to the nuclear world.
Glass has probably composed more works for the stage than any other contemporary American. Notable operas and chamber operas are Satyagraha (1978/79), The Voyage (1990), Kepler (2009), and more recently, Circus Days and Nights (2021).