A revelatory new account of Black innovation in American opera, showing how composers, performers, and critics redefined the genre both aesthetically and politically in the early twentieth century.

The inauguration of a “golden age” in Black opera is often dated to 1955, when Marian Anderson became the first Black singer to perform in a leading role at New York’s Metropolitan Opera. Yet Anderson’s debut was actually preceded by a rich Black operatic tradition that developed in the first half of the twentieth century. Lucy Caplan tells the stories of the Black composers, performers, critics, teachers, and students who created this vibrant opera culture, even as they were excluded from the genre’s most prominent institutions. Their movement, which flourished alongside the Harlem Renaissance, redefined opera as a wellspring of aesthetic innovation, sociality, and antiracist activism.

Caplan argues that Black opera in the early twentieth century had decidedly countercultural ambitions. In opera’s sonic grandeur and dramatic maximalism, artists found creative resources for expressing the complexity of Black life. The protagonists of this story include composers Harry Lawrence Freeman and Shirley Graham, whose operas boldly interpreted Black diasporic history; performers Caterina Jarboro and Florence Cole-Talbert, who both starred in the racially fraught role of Aida; and critics Sylvester Russell and Nora Holt, who wrote imaginatively about the genre in the Black press. Yet Caplan also focuses on the many Black students, amateurs, opera house staff, and listeners who contributed indelibly to opera’s meanings.

With the creation of new companies, choruses, and audiences, opera not only circulated in the Black public sphere but itself became a public sphere with radical potential.

"Fascinating…a many-sided portrait of…a ‘Black operatic counterculture.’" - Arts Fuse

"A scrupulously researched history…that has been all but ignored." - BBC Music Magazine

"Caplan highlights a treasure trove of vocalists and creators in this magisterial work that will prove immensely rewarding to serious opera scholars and those studying race relations and sociology in the 20th-century United States." - Library Journal

"A significant contribution to the histories of American opera, the performing arts, and Black American culture…will enlighten and inform opera fans and readers interested in Black artists and culture." - Booklist

"An essential contribution to both operatic historiography and African-American cultural studies, with Caplan’s research illuminating the transformative impact of Black artists on operatic tradition, challenging entrenched racial barriers and enriching the art form with new dimensions of meaning." - Limelight

"An ambitious, demanding work on neglected Black artists." - Kirkus Reviews