James P. Johnson (1894-1955)
De Organizer
Blues opera in one act (late 1930s)
The Dreamy Kid (excerpts)
Opera in one act (1937)
University of Michigan Opera Theatre
University of Michigan Symphony Orchestra/Kenneth Kiesler
rec. 2006, Hill Auditorium, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, USA
Librettos enclosed.
Reviewed as download from press preview.
Naxos 8.669041 [66]
Jazz enthusiasts know James P. Johnson as one of the early pianists who developed ragtime into what in due time became known as jazz. He and Jelly Roll Morton were the true pioneers. Johnson was also an important composer of popular melodies; his best-known song was no doubt Charleston. That he also was a ‘serious’ composer and even wrote two operas, may come as a surprise, and that he also collaborated with librettists from the then Parnassus – Langston Hughes and Nobel Prize Winner Eugene O’Neill – only confirms his ambition to make imprints in the serious world. He wasn’t without forerunners, though. As early as 1911, Scott Joplin composed Treemonisha, but even though he got a glowing review in the American Musician and Art Journal when the score was published, it was never performed during his lifetime and it was not rediscovered until the early 1970s, when it even won a Pulitzer Prize. Naturally, Johnson cannot have heard Treemonisha, but as it came from the same tradition it is no wonder that there are similarities between it and Johnson’s operas. A more direct influence, however, was Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess.
Both works are one act operas. De Organizer is labelled a ‘Blues opera’ and is, moreover, a choral opera, where there is, apart from a few longer solo portions, constant dialogue between the chorus and individual solo voices. The story takes place on a plantation in the South in the 1930s, i.e. contemporaneous to when the opera was written. A group of Afro-American sharecroppers are waiting for a union organizer and his companion is handing out leaflets. De Organizer appears and explains the advantages of forming a union. Then the Overseer interferes, threatening, with a whip in hand, but the croppers overpower him and the union is formed.
The opera is compact, just over thirty minutes, and packed with drama. The music is permeated with jazz rhythms and blues feeling – it is really A Swingin’ Affair! OK, If I want to be pernickety, there is a great deal of over-vibrant solo singing and some wobbly choristers, but this is easy to wink at in view of their enthusiasm, conviction and vitality, and the chorus Plantin’, plowin’, hoein’! just a couple of minutes into the opera is very moving. Though the score is divided into numbers, it is performed continuously and the whole opera is only one track.
The Dreamy Kid is quite different. It is a chamber play with no chorus and only four characters, and structured more in the European tradition, but musically with an American twist. While the orchestra in De Organizer is a jazz combo, here we have a traditional symphony orchestra. Even though this also is a one-act-opera, it is a bit longer – by how much I don’t know, as we get only seven excerpts, and they amount to 34 minutes. The libretto is an adaptation of an existing play by O’Neill about an old Afro-American woman lying on her deathbed, and her grandson, Dreamy, who has killed a white man in a quarrel. The police are on his heels but he risks his life to visit his grandma, persisting in spite of the knowledge that they could turn up any time. This, too, is a tightly knit drama, but there are several good solo arias. In the first scene (track 2), Irene, Dreamy’s woman, has a long solo and further on Mammy sings a beautiful, tender song to Dreamy. There are also lots of highly dramatic quarrels, including one which turns into a love duet between Dreamy and Irene – though the police’s arrival at any moment is constant threat. I only wish the opera had been recorded complete.
It should be mentioned that both operas had been reconstructed by James Dapogny, who unfortunately didn’t live long enough to experience the issue of this CD, but was present at the recordings and the staged performances back in 2006. In the notes, he writes at length about his extensive restoration work, without which we wouldn’t have been able to hear this music and the world would have been much poorer.
So, dear reader, grab the opportunity and give this disc a listen. Whether you like it or not is less important than that you should be made to think about to what degree the world for African-Americans has since changed.
Göran Forsling
Help us financially by purchasing from
Performers
De Organizer
De Organizer, Darnell Ishmel (baritone)
De Organizer’s Woman, Monique Spells (contralto)
Old Man, Kenneth Kellogg (bass)
A Woman, Rabihah Davis Dunn (soprano)
Old Woman, Olivia Duval (soprano)
Brother Dosher, Emery Stephens (tenor)
Brother Bates, Lonel Woods, (tenor)
Overseer, Branden C.S. Hood (bass)
The Dreamy Kid (excerpts)
Mammy, Elizabeth Gray (mezzo-soprano)
Ceely Ann, Lori Celeste Hicks (soprano)
Irene, Olivia Duval (soprano)
Dreamy, Lonel Woods (tenor)
