Stable Itinerancy: The Entanglement of Past and Present in Postapartheid South African Opera

• Published in: The Opera journal 2022-04, Vol.55 (1), p.7-32
• Main Author: Smith, Allison R
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: 19th century; Apartheid; Audiences; Black studies; Festivals; Genre; Musical performances; Musicians & conductors; Opera history; Racism; Singers; Singing; South African English; Travel; Voice professionals
• ISSN: 0030-3585

"3 In a heated discussion between the singers and Williams upon their return to South Africa, Williams allegedly asked, "who do you think you are to think that you deserve this money?"4 In a country still reeling from the aftershock of institutionalized racism, such comments, representations, and pay disparities sound concerns that while legal apartheid has ended, contemporary South Africa has inherited the apartheid-era legacy of white paternalism framed as benevolence. Opera scholar Carolyn Abbate argues that the labor of opera performance, particularly the operatic voice, is what makes opera material and that such labor is responsible for enlivening the work object that is an opera score.5 Mladen Dolar, however, warns that a hyperfocus on the voice, as Abbate seems to tend toward, turns the voice into a fetish object that disguises the subject from which the voice originates.6 Building off of Dolar's argument, I ultimately suggest that characterizing opera performance as labor while shifting focus away from the singing subjects who perform such labor also obfuscates the materiality and conditions of the opera singers' labor. By the late-nineteenth century South Africa began forming its own minstrelsy troupes with Black performers, the most well-known of which was the Kafir Christy Minstrels, who were likely formed in the 1880s and were located in Durban.11 While performance venues were segregated at this time in South Africa, there is also evidence, as Dale Cockrell shows, that Black, mixedrace, and white audiences alike attended minstrel shows.12 As late as the 1940s, new Black minstrelsy groups were forming in South Africa, such as The African Minstrels, who listed "operatic minstrel choruses" as one of the mainstays of their repertoire.13 As Andre notes, the content of these minstrelsy performances, whether by traveling American troupes or by local South African troupes, is hard to discern, though there is some evidence that opera arias were performed in these shows along with spirituals and comedic segments.14 While I do not wish to underemphasize the racist violence of blackface minstrelsy, I follow scholars like English and Black studies scholar Louis ChudeSokei in suggesting that Black South African minstrelsy groups did allow for performance opportunities for Black South African singers, alternative spaces for opera, and room for Black innovation of the genre.15 That is, while opera's arrival to South Africa was certainly within a racist context