The first major American opera composer is not who you might expect, a Black man born right after the Civil War in Cleveland, Ohio. Harry Lawrence Freeman (1869-1954) is perhaps on of the most unique American composers whose work spans the 19th and 20th century. Born in Cleveland to a middle class home, Freeman was drawn to music at a young age and participated in his public school music programs. After graduating from high school, he set off for Denver where he experienced his first opera, Wagner’s Tannhäuser.[1] This performance inspired Freeman to dedicate the rest of his life to composing new operas, around 18 operas in total. At just 18 years old, he wrote two operas, and at 24, he staged his first major work, The Martyr in 1893.
The Martyr premiered at the Deutches Theater in Denver, Colorado, in 1893. Hiring a full orchestra was quite challenging for Freeman, so he would either accompany the singers on piano or hire a small band. For The Martyr, Freeman was able to hire the Housley Brothers, a popular band that toured the vaudeville circuit in the Midwest. The band included two saxophonists, this opera is the very first American opera to use the saxophone.[2]
The Martyr was performed at the World’s Columbian Exhibition in Chicago in 1893. For such a young, untrained composer this feat is quite extraordinary. The opera was also performed in Ohio and later in New York. Later in Freeman’s life, The Martyr was performed at Carnegie Hall on September 21st 1947 to celebrate his works.[3]
After his first success with The Martyr in Denver, Freeman moved back to Cleveland to study music, composition, and theory with Johann Beck, founder of the Cleveland Symphony.[4] During his study with Beck, the Cleveland Symphony performed parts of his early operas. This is one of the first times an all white orchestra performed the music of a Black composer.[5] After Cleveland, Freeman moved to New York City, and became one of the major composers of the Harlem Renaissance.
The next of Freeman’s operas to feature the saxophone is his 1928 opera, Voodoo. Voodoo received its first performance on the radio station, WGBS on May 20, 1928. Later that year, it received it’s full stage production at the 52nd Street Theater in New York City on September 10-11, 1928.[6]
The opera was written for an orchestra of twenty. The saxophonists in the original production are John Wyatt and William ..ese.
If any of you are sleuths and can make out the name that has been cut out, please email me your guess. This is New York based saxophonist in the 1920s. Either alto or tenor saxophone.
The opera received much press in all of the papers, and reviews of the opera were mixed. Some didn’t like his mixture of Italian singing and jazz and folk influences. The New York Times said his jazz themes mixed with traditional Italian operatic forms produced “a curiously naïve mélange of varied styles.”[7] In the Times Union, the reviewer wrote “There are arias that ape Verdi and Donizetti. There is a plot that reaks (sic) of the tragedic school. And there is an orchestration which combines the worst elements of Strauss—Schoenberg—Stravinsky—Honegger and Gershwin….To combine spirituals with Italian forms and a dash of modernity requires a composer of stature. Mr. Freeman is not of sufficient size to handle the job.”[8] Perhaps the reason this work failed on the stage was summed up by James Weldon Johnson, who noted Freeman was “the product of a late-nineteenth-century upbringing; he came of age at a time when the genteel tradition still held a firm grip on both white and black creative artists.”[9] The only way for a black artist to succeed was to tailor their work for the white audience.
The amount of work that went in to stage the opera was massive. Freeman wrote the music and libretto, he taught the singers and the musicians their parts. His wife would star, and his son would manage and co-star. He would stage these operas at great financial costs, mortgaging his house to finance the work. Below is an article from the New York Amsterdam News that highlights the challenges of staging a Black opera.
The lack of interest in Freeman’s operas and the bad press for Voodoo may have sunk the opera, but in 1930, Freeman received the William E. Harmon award for Voodoo, an award given to the finest African American artists and composers.[10] Freeman had big dreams for his operas. He even sent of of his scores to The Metropolitan Opera asking if they could stage the work in 1935. He was rejected, not because of the quality of the work, but because the Metropolitan Opera was not interested in staging a work by a Black composer.[11] It took the Metropolitan Opera almost 90 more years to finally stage an opera by a Black composer, Terrence Blanchard’s 2021 Fire Shut Up My Bones. Blanchard said of being the first, “Even though I’m the first I’m not the first qualified, that’s for damn sure.”[12]
In 2008, Harry Lawrence Freeman’s great niece donated all of Freeman’s writings to Columbia University. Dr. Anne Holt, who was a research assistant at Columbia University library was in charge of organizing the collection. Finding opera compositions by a Black composer from this period was a huge discovery, she approached the Harlem Opera Theater to perform Freeman’s works.[13] In 2015, Morningside Opera in collaboration with Harlem Opera Theater and Harlem Chamber players stage this Voodoo in New York City for a festival at Columbia called “Restaging the Harlem Renaissance: New Views on the Performing Arts in Black Manhattan.” You can find out more about Voodoo performance here.
This following excerpt highlights the stylistic change from the operatic opening to the banjo and saxophone folk music around 2:15 in the video below.
Freeman’s use of the saxophones is not in a typical jazz style in the ’20s. The saxophone lines are lyrical and vocal like. In this next aria, the tenor saxophone compliments the wordless vocals.
If you want to hear more from the opera, Morningside Opera has more clips up on their YouTube page here. Outside of this performance, no other productions of Freeman’s operas have been performed posthumously. His music remains unpublished, sitting in the archives at Columbia, and it will take much more research to bring his music back where it belongs, on the stage.
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[1] Worley, Ben. “Harry Lawrence Freeman: Pioneering the African American Grand Opera.” Journal of Singing 75, no. 1 (2018): 17+. Gale Academic OneFile (accessed April 14, 2023). https://link-gale-com.proxy.lib.duke.edu/apps/doc/A573095358/AONE?u=duke_perkins&sid=summon&xid=fe5ccd4a.
[2] Holt, Nora. 1944. “‘Father of Opera’.” New York Amsterdam News (1943-1961), Nov 11, 13. https://login.proxy.lib.duke.edu/login?url=https://www.proquest.com/historical-newspapers/father-opera/docview/226016902/se-2.
[3] Worley, Ben. “Harry Lawrence Freeman: Pioneering the African American Grand Opera.” Journal of Singing 75, no. 1 (2018): 17+. Gale Academic OneFile (accessed April 14, 2023). https://link-gale-com.proxy.lib.duke.edu/apps/doc/A573095358/AONE?u=duke_perkins&sid=summon&xid=fe5ccd4a.
[4] DAVIDSON, CELIA ELIZABETH. 1980. “OPERAS BY AFRO-AMERICAN COMPOSERS: A CRITICAL SURVEY AND ANALYSIS OF SELECTED WORKS*.” Order No. 8017717, The Catholic University of America. https://login.proxy.lib.duke.edu/login?url=https://www.proquest.com/dissertations-theses/operas-afro-american-composers-critical-survey/docview/302962272/se-2.
[5] ibid.
[6] ibid.
[7] ‘VOODOO’ A NAIVE MELANGE.: OPERA BY NEGRO COMPOSER IS GIVEN WITH ALL-NEGRO CAST OF THIRTY. (1928, Sep 11). New York Times (1923-) Retrieved from https://login.proxy.lib.duke.edu/login?url=https://www.proquest.com/historical-newspapers/voodoo-naive-melange/docview/104347793/se-2
[8] Strickland, Harold A. “Music Events of the Day” Times Union (1928 Sep 11) Newspaper.com: World Collection Retrieved from https://newscomwc.newspapers.com/image/559904464/?terms=lawrence%20freeman&pqsid=c6FJsDy5M4wYIGAwofnBPw%3A19728%3A1495476274&match=1
[9]DAVIDSON, CELIA ELIZABETH. 1980. “OPERAS BY AFRO-AMERICAN COMPOSERS: A CRITICAL SURVEY AND ANALYSIS OF SELECTED WORKS*.” Order No. 8017717, The Catholic University of America. https://login.proxy.lib.duke.edu/login?url=https://www.proquest.com/dissertations-theses/operas-afro-american-composers-critical-survey/docview/302962272/se-2.
[10] Worley, Ben. “Harry Lawrence Freeman: Pioneering the African American Grand Opera.” Journal of Singing 75, no. 1 (2018): 17+. Gale Academic OneFile (accessed April 14, 2023). https://link-gale-com.proxy.lib.duke.edu/apps/doc/A573095358/AONE?u=duke_perkins&sid=summon&xid=fe5ccd4a.
[11] Gilmore, Nicholas “America’s First Black Opera Composer Left Behind a Rich, Untapped Archive” Saturday Evening Post, (2019, Oct. 9) Retrieved from https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/2019/10/americas-first-black-opera-composer-left-behind-a-rich-untapped-archive/
[12] Ross, Janell “‘Our Stories are Universal Too.’ Terence Blanchard on Bringing Black Narratives to the Metropolitan Opera” Time (2021, Sep. 270 Retrieved from https://time.com/6101886/terence-blanchard-interview-metropolitan-opera/
[13] Gilmore, Nicholas “America’s First Black Opera Composer Left Behind a Rich, Untapped Archive” Saturday Evening Post, (2019, Oct. 9) Retrieved from https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/2019/10/americas-first-black-opera-composer-left-behind-a-rich-untapped-archive/
the Operatic Saxophone 