Revenge and happiness were feelings constantly at play in Edmond Dede’s opera Morgiane, ou le Sultan d’Ispahan last week at Jazz at Lincoln Center’s Frederick P. Rose Hall. Those impulses, often contending and interrelated, along with a mysterious family secret, drive the world premiere of this opera, putatively the oldest one by an African American composer. Dede, a native of New Orleans (1827-1901), lived his most productive years in France where, in 1887, he composed Morgiane. It has taken 125 years for the opera to finally hit the stage, and after two abbreviated runs elsewhere it received a full performance here in New York City.
A summary of why it has taken so long is a narrative worthy of an opera itself, given the racial obstacles Dede endured during a lifetime when a Black man in the world of classical music was rarely appreciated. Morgiane is a testament of Dede’s talent, and the four-act opera, though limited in production, is a rather timeworn tale of a damsel in…
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