Margaret Garner: The Premiere Performances of Toni Morrison's Libretto

by La Vinia Delois Jennings (Editor)

Overview

In January 1856, Margaret Garner—an enslaved woman on a Kentucky plantation—ran with members of her family to the free state of Ohio. As slave catchers attempted to capture the fugitives in Cincinnati, Garner cut the throat of her two-and-a-half-year-old daughter to prevent her return to slavery. Toni Morrison first imaginatively treated Margaret Garner’s infanticide in her Pulitzer Prize–winning novel Beloved (1987). In 2004, it became the subject of her libretto Margaret Garner: Opera in Two Acts, a lyrical text designed to be paired with music and sung operatically. Grammy Award–winning composer Richard Danielpour had tapped Morrison to write the libretto for his opera Margaret Garner: A New American Opera, which world premiered in Detroit in 2005.

La Vinia Delois Jennings’s edited volume records key events, debates, and critical assessments of Morrison's success with Garner’s story as a libretto. It also includes essays by individuals who played central roles in bringing the opera to the stage and recovering Garner's story. The collection opens with a foreword by mezzo-soprano Denyce Graves, for whom Danielpour composed the title role. The other contributors range from literary and opera scholars to specialists in American slavery studies and scholars of Toni Morrison's oeuvre. Their essays position her libretto within the African American operatic and libretto tradition, a tradition not fully known to performance scholars and heretofore unexamined.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780813938677
Publisher:	University of Virginia Press
Publication date:	09/02/2016
Pages:	248
Product dimensions:	6.20(w) x 8.90(h) x 1.10(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

La Vinia Delois Jennings, Distinguished Professor in the Humanities and Professor of Twentieth-Century American Literature and Culture at the University of Tennessee, is author of Toni Morrison and the Idea of Africa.

Table of Contents

Foreword: Performing Margaret Garner Denyce Graves ix

Acknowledgments xxiii

Cast of Characters xxv

Synopsis Mary Lou Humphrey xxvii

Introduction: Writing Margaret Garner La Vinia Delois Jennings 1

Turning Words into Music: Toni Morrison's Libretto Margaret Garner and Its Musical Realization Michael Halliwell 9

"Dangerous Territory": The Margaret Garner Opera and the Margaret Garner Case Steven Weisenburger 39

Rendering Margaret Garner Accessible: The Preproduction Outreach Campaign Delores M. Walters 61

Who Speaks for Robert Garner? The Historical and Libretto Representations Carl B. Westmoreland 77

Confronting Margaret Garner in Cincinnati: The Opera, the Toni Morrison Society Conference, and the Public Debate Kristine Yohe 93

Haiti, the African-American Libretto Tradition, and Margaret Garner La Vinia Delois Jennings 116

Imagining Margaret Garner: Classical and Contemporary Texts and Intertexts Aimable Twagilimana 145

Margaret Garner and Appomattox: Performing Slavery/Rewriting Opera Helena Woodard 169

Notes on Contributors 189

Index 193

Editorial Reviews

This study’s scope is impressive and engaging and opens a window not only on the genesis and development of the opera from a variety of standpoints but also on the politics of producing such a potentially ‘controversial’ piece on black history and black life in the United States. It is at once eclectic and single-minded, and offers insight not only into the underpinnings of Margaret Garner but also into the sociocultural impact of high art.

Justine Tally

The combination in this volume of personal, historical, political, diasporic, and artistic responses to the origin and impact of the opera Margaret Garner is both original and captivating. It is an engaging read, a brilliant design—full of many informative and surprising connections. This is ‘thick description’ at its best, and our full appreciation of Toni Morrison's libretto is all the better because of it. A must-read!

Carolyn Denard

An insightful, amazing, and rich collection thorough in research and detail, which honors three brave and beautiful women—Margaret Garner, Toni Morrison, and Denyce Graves. Denyce Graves opens the book with courage, honesty, and truth. Thank you, La Vinia Delois Jennings.

Kenny Leon

The present volume offers critical assessments of Morrison's libretto as well as essays by individuals who played central roles in recovering Garner's story and bringing the opera to stage.

Opera America

This is a truly original work and expands the conversation concerning Morrison’s political, aesthetic, moral, and ethical imperatives. The quality of the book’s editing is superb. Each essay is outstanding and provides the reader with multiple perspectives and critical lenses with which to read and view the text: historiography, narratology, music theory, trauma theory, the neo-slave narrative, and Black Atlantic Studies among other hermeneutical paradigms.

from award citation as Winner of the Toni Morrison Book Prize for Best Edited Book published on the

La Vinia Delois Jennings has compiled a trove of compelling essays that provides thoughtful and sometimes provocative insights into Toni Morrison's first opera libretto, Margaret Garner. This collection offers a clear-eyed view of both historical and topical issues, and is fascinating reading. In addition, it would be an invaluable tool, whether in academic settings, or to enrich and inform future performances of this powerful opera.

Janelle Gelfand

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