Dialogues on Opera and the African-American Experience

by Wallace McClain Cheatham

Overview

Opera audiences around the world are swept away by the magnificent voices of African-American singers like Leontyne Price, Kathleen Battle, and Jessye Norman. But growth opportunities for African-American opera singers are comparatively recent. Thus, Cheatham's work is especially timely and relevant. He engages in conversations with ten prominent African-American operatic artists: Carmen deLavallade, Andrew Frierson, Everett Lee, Sylvia Olden Lee, Dorothy Rudd Moore, Benjamin Matthews, Wayne Sanders, George Shirley, Shirley Verrett, and William Warfield. In their conversations with Cheatham, these artists candidly discuss the uniqueness of being African-American within the operatic mainstream. They also articulate their inspiration, their dedication, and their travails as they rose within the opera world. With photographs.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780810831476
Publisher:	Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.
Publication date:	03/06/1997
Pages:	208
Product dimensions:	5.64(w) x 8.78(h) x 0.65(d)

About the Author

Wallace McClain Cheatham is a composer and music specialist at Elm Creative Arts School in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He has published articles in The Black Perspective on Music and Black Music Research Journal.

Editorial Reviews

African-American opera singers articulate their inspiration, dedication, and travails as they rose in the opera world.

Music Educators Journal

Cheatham breaks important new ground with his highly relevant, timely, and interesting contribution. It has much to offer toward an understanding of the black opera singer and the black vocal instrument. Further, no comprehension of the history of opera will be complete without an appreciation of the compelling experiences recounted here, and it will also prove critically informative as a guide for change as the world of professional singing enters the twenty-first century.

Journal of Singing

...a precious resource on the nearly unexamined topic of blacks in opera...an important document.

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

African-American opera singers articulate their inspiration, dedication, and travails as they rose in the opera world.

Music Educators Journal (MENC)

Cheatham breaks important new ground with his highly relevant, timely, and interesting contribution. It has much to offer toward an understanding of the black opera singer and the black vocal instrument. Further, no comprehension of the history of opera will be complete without an appreciation of the compelling experiences recounted here, and it will also prove critically informative as a guide for change as the world of professional singing enters the twenty-first century.

Journal Of Singing

At a time when opportunities for African-American operatic artists are finally beginning to grow, Cheatham interviews ten of them to elicit their views and experiences on working within mainstream opera, their inspiration, their dedication, and their travails. Among them are Carmen de Lavallade, Everett Lee, Dorothy Rudd Moore, Wayne Sanders, and Shirley Vertett. Annotation c. by Book News, Inc., Portland, Or.

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