Edmond Dédé’s ”Morgiane” is the world premiere of a long-lost masterpiece
WASHINGTON, DC— Opera Lafayette, in partnership with OperaCréole, presents RE|STORE: Edmond Dédé’s Morgiane, a concert opera production of the never-performed, long-lost masterpiece believed to be the earliest extant opera by a Black American. This world premiere tour will take place in four cities across the United States including New Orleans, Washington, DC, New York City, and then College Park, MD.
Morgiane is believed to be the earliest extant complete opera by a Black American. The work was only recently discovered after being hidden in a single manuscript for over 130 years.
Edmond Dédé, a fourth-generation free person of color born in 1827 in New Orleans had a successful career as a conductor and composer in Bordeaux, France, after fleeing the US in 1855 before the Civil War. He wrote nearly 100 critically and popularly acclaimed works for the French stage. His magnum opus, however—a four act French grand opera on themes from Ali Baba and the 40 Thieves—had yet to receive a premiere at the time of his death, and languished, unrecognized, in private collections and libraries for over a century. Opera Lafayette, with Artistic Director Designate Patrick Dupre Quigley, and in partnership with New Orleans’ OperaCréole, with Founder and Director Givonna Joseph, has painstakingly transcribed this monumental work from the original 550 page handwritten manuscript and will proudly present the world premiere of Dédé’s masterpiece 138 years after its composition.
The cast includes Mary Elizabeth Williams (soprano), Kenneth Kellogg (bass), Chauncey Packer (tenor), Joshua Conyers (baritone), and Jonathan Woody (bass-baritone), Nicole
Cabell (soprano) (only in DC, NY, and MD), Taylor White (soprano) (only in New Orleans), along with OperaCréole’s featured artists and chorus. The New Orleans production will feature The Louisiana Philharmonic Orchestra performing with modern instruments, and the Washington, DC, New York City, and College Park productions will feature the Opera Lafayette Orchestra performing on historical instruments. Opera Lafayette’s Artistic Director Designate Patrick Quigley will conduct all four presentations.
Dédé, a virtuoso violinist, left behind his native Louisiana due to the brutal treatment of free people of color in the Antebellum period and built a new life in France. There, he studied with the best instructors at the Paris Conservatoire, the preeminent institute of musical education at that time, and enjoyed a highly successful career as a conductor and composer in the theaters of Bordeaux, producing a significant output of operatic, concert, and popular music.
Morgiane was received by the producers of opera in Bordeaux but never mounted. The manuscript, lost for over a century, was eventually discovered at the Harvard Memorial Library in 2010. The work has never been performed and has existed only in the author’s own hand. Part of the work of bringing Dédé score to the stage has required transcribing the 1887 handwritten manuscript into modern, 21st century musical notation, translating the libretto from French into English, and creating the first-ever performing scores for vocalists and orchestra members.
“The music Dédé composed for the work is both exciting and innovative, combining a European style and overtones of Southern Americana and brass band music with virtuosic, tour-de-force vocal writing” says Opera Lafayette Artistic Director Designate Patrick Quigley.
This project is a collaboration undertaken by the two foremost companies in the United States with respective expertise in historical Black and French opera. OperaCréole (New Orleans, LA) is dedicated to researching and presenting lost or rarely performed works by composers of African descent. The company focuses on works by 19th-century New Orleanian free composers of color, and also on promoting Louisiana’s Creole language and culture. Led by founders Givonna Joseph and Aria Mason, OperaCréole musicians are professional artists, educators, and international soloists with roots in New Orleans, where the first opera season in what is now the United States premiered in 1796.
Opera Lafayette (Washington, DC, and New York, NY) is a leading interpreter of music from the 17th to the 19th centuries, performing little-known operatic gems and creating a legacy of these works through recordings. Opera Lafayette gives new life to centuries-old compositions, supported by scholarly research that highlights both the historical context of these works and their relevance to today’s world. Led by founder Ryan Brown, Opera Lafayette gave the world premiere of Jean-Philippe Rameau’s Io in May of 2023, a previously uncompleted work which had remained unperformed since its writing in the 1750s. Opera Lafayette gives seasons in both Washington, DC, and New York, NY, and has been invited twice to perform at the Opéra Royale at Versailles, France, performing five sold-out shows.
A video recording of Morgiane will be undertaken at the live-performance on February 7 at Dekelboum Concert Hall at The Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center, presented by the School of Music and Clarice Presents at the University of Maryland, College Park. A live-performance feed will be made available to the wider community at no cost to ensure accessibility.
Scholar and media partners on the project include Edmond Dédé’s only modern biographer, Sally McKee, author of The Exile’s Song: Edmond Dédé and the Unfinished Revolutions of the Atlantic World, and, Candace Bailey, who is currently working on her monograph Edmond Dédé and His World: The Context for Morgiane. Community partners for Morgiane include Coalition for African Americans in the Performing Arts (CAAPA), University of Maryland School of Music and The Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center, Folger Shakespeare Library, Opera Ebony, and Harvard University’s Houghton Library, and The Historic New Orleans Collection. Additionally, Opera Fusion: New Works, a partnership between Cincinnati Opera and the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music dedicated to fostering the development of American operas, provided facilities, talent, and personnel for the OperaCréole and Opera Lafayette team to work through the newly completed, first edition of the score, giving the creative team time to assess, make changes, and adjust the music and libretto. These performances are made possible, in part, with funding from the Ford Foundation and the DC Commission on the Arts.
