HGO celebrates the life of Marian Anderson
On Easter 1939, Marian Anderson looked out from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial and saw a sea of people.
The crowd of more than 75,000 stretched all the way to the Washington Monument but would have been a lot smaller had the celebrated contralto been allowed to perform at the Daughters of the American Revolution’s Constitution Hall, just a few blocks away, per the original plan.
But Anderson was black, so the DAR said no dice.
The extraordinary circumstances behind the concert, and the remarkable singer whose performance prompted breathless newsreel headlines including “Nation’s Capital Gets a Lesson in Tolerance,” are now the basis of “Marian’s Song,” part of Houston Grand Opera’s multiyear Song of Houston initiative.
Premiering March 5 and 6 at the Wortham’s Cullen Theater, the 60-minute chamber opera plunges a fading episode of American history into a moment in dire need of the grit and grace Anderson displayed on the National Mall.
“Part of opera’s 21st-century responsibility is to preserve relevant sung stories which might otherwise be lost,” HGO artistic and music director Patrick Summers says. “As a great
singer herself, Marian’s story uniquely deserves to be told in the medium in which she spent her life: in song.
“Her life and artistic journey echoes the lives of so many of our fellow Houstonians and their ancestors,” he adds. “What a privilege to help Miss Anderson sing again to a new generation perhaps encountering her story for the first time.”
Casting a slam poet
To revive Anderson’s story, HGO turned to its composer-inresidence, Damien Sneed, and Houston poet laureate emeritus Deborah D.E.E.P. Mouton, who collaborated with Houston Ballet on its 2018 mixed-repertory program, “Play.” In her 2019 book “Newsworthy,” Mouton wrote a so-called “mini-libretto” in the form of a conversation among Jordan Davis, a black teenager who was shot and killed at a Florida gas station in November 2012; his white assailant; and the gun.
“The gun has the majority of the dialogue,” Mouton explains.
The libretto for “Marian’s Song” is like that poem scaled way up, she adds.
“I think there was some seed of it in (that), but I’ve never taken on a project this big before.”
Mouton incorporated her spoken-word background into “Marian’s Song” by creating the role of Neveah, a contemporary college student who forms a sort of parallel narrative. As allies such as NAACP secretary Walter White and U.S. Secretary of the Interior Harold Ickes help clear Anderson’s path to the National Mall, Neveah — remembering her grandmother’s stories about the great singer — becomes determined to save Anderson’s childhood church in Philadelphia from the wrecking ball.
To play Neveah, the opera’s lone nonsinging role, HGO cast prominent Houston slam poet Tina B.
“When we did the first public performance, one of the comments was, ‘It’s really interesting — I was really worried about the spoken word, but instead it sounds like its own instrument,’” Mouton says. “And I think that’s very much what it is; it’s just like another instrument that we get to add to the ensemble and think about timbre and rhythm and all those things that spoken word brings in.”
Letters from Eleanor Roosevelt
Someone else in Anderson’s corner was Eleanor Roosevelt. After the DAR denied Anderson’s request to use the still-segregated Constitution Hall (the concert was organized by Howard University), the first lady resigned from the organization. Whereas Mouton turned to Anderson’s autobiography — “My Lord, What a Morning,” originally published in 1956 — to help her get a sense of that character’s voice, she found Roosevelt’s letters from the time equally valuable.
“Nobody does anything by themselves, and I think that despite color, despite creed, despite socioeconomic status, at the end of the day we’re human,” Mouton says. “If we can find a way to work at that level then we find a way to be powerful and to be impactful, and I think that’s what Eleanor Roosevelt very much did.”
Almost 16 years after singing at the Lincoln Memorial, Anderson debuted at the Metropolitan Opera in Verdi’s “Un ballo in maschera.” She sang at the inaugurations of Presidents Eisenhower and Kennedy, and her 1964-65 farewell tour opened at Constitution Hall. Anderson was 96 and a cultural icon many times over when she passed away in 1993.
“We actually spend very little time talking about her life after (the 1939 concert), which is kind of a shame because she had this ridiculously amazing career afterwards,” Mouton says with a sigh.
But to her, the message of “Marian’s Song” echoes her charge to Mouton’s creativewriting students at Kinder High School for the Performing and Visual Arts: “When writing your story, make sure you’re the one holding the pen.”
“I think the way we continue heritage, we continue legacy is to continue to talk about the people who came before us,” she says. “I think that no struggle is unique; I think that we all will feel oppression and have felt oppression, especially as people of color.
“And as black people, I think that we need to hold onto the names of the people who came before us,” Mouton adds.
For managing director Perryn Leech, “Marian’s Song” allows HGO to check a number of boxes.
“The commissioning of new works, particularly those that fuse different musical styles and influences, is essential to further expand the boundaries of opera as an art form,” Leech says.
It’s also a perfect fit for Song of Houston, whose primary goal is “to share stories that define the unique character of our art form and our city,” he explains.
“Houston is one of the most diverse cities in America, and ‘Marian’s Song’ presented the opportunity to tell the story of an iconic and groundbreaking black artist while featuring a diverse array of local talent,” Leech adds.
It’s certainly been a memorable experience for Mouton.
“(HGO) really opened my eyes to see all the ways that my work could be performed and can work in the world,” she says. “They gave me a lot of grace and freedom to figure out what it looked like, and a lot of support in looking at sample operas or sample treatments and figuring out how do I take my voice and put it in there.
“It’s not something that I ever imagined, but I know that I would never change it,” Mouton adds. “This is definitely the path that I want to be going down, and I’m just really grateful to them for giving me and other local artists this opportunity.”