Seattle Opera makes history: ‘Jubilee’ brings traditional Negro spirituals to opera for first time
Oct 7, 2024, 7:01 PM | Updated: Oct 8, 2024, 9:52 am
For the first time, traditional Negro spirituals will be sung as an opera, when Seattle Opera hosts the world premiere of “Jubilee,” on October 12.
You can listen to the music and the story of how “Jubilee” was born, below:
It’s a creation of Tazewell Thompson, who was introduced to that style of music after he was removed from a broken home.
“I grew up in a convent, in a Catholic convent, and one day the music teacher said to me, see me after class,” Thompson told KIRO Newsradio. “I have something that you should hear that concerns you and your people. I showed up, and she started playing Negro spirituals for me. I had never HEARD Negro spirituals.”
He was entranced.
“A Negro spiritual is what the enslaved men and women and children sang on the plantation,” he said. “They sang them in the fields, they sang them in the houses that they worked in, whenever they could. They’re work songs.”
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They were also songs of community, deep faith and survival.
“Steal away, steal away, steal away to Jesus,” Thompson sang, his deep baritone voice illustrating the point.
“Now-” he added, “there’s a CODE in that song. When you hear it being sung in the plantations, that’s telling the others we’re going to escape. We’re going to run away.”
There are layers to these songs, which he said makes them wonderful as well.
Students brought those wonderful songs to Fisk University, a school that was founded in Tennessee after the Civil War, for the education of newly freed slaves.
“One of the administrators who came down from the northeast was extremely impressed with hearing the voices of the students just singing here in the campus area,” Fisk University President, Dr. Agenia Clark told KIRO Newsradio. “So impressed that he put together a group of singers and decided to take them to Europe to do a musical tour.”
The Fisk Jubilee Singers’ tour in 1873 included a performance for Britain’s Queen Victoria and was so successful it funded the construction of the first permanent building on the campus
“And that building still exists today, we still use it today, and it’s still one of the most magnificent structures we have on campus,” Clark said.
It’s a building that is as strong as the choir’s legacy.
“I saw a wonderful documentary on the Fisk Jubilee Singers, and I was hooked!” Thompson, who was inspired to write a musical about the original group, said.
It was Seattle Opera’s general manager who challenged Thompson to take it a step further.
“You are doing Jubilee here,” he said she told him. “You’re bringing it here.”
“I was thrilled- over the moon!” Thompson said. “She said, however, NOT as a musical. We’re going to do it as an opera.”
Among the performers, portraying the original Fisk Jubilee Singers is soprano Tiffany Townsend. She said she grew up singing Negro spirituals in church, but that performing them in this opera is different.
“Putting it in an opera … I don’t think we take them for granted anymore,” she told KIRO Newsradio. “They’re more potent, I think. When I sing these songs, there’s more emotion behind them than just like a song that I sing in passing. I’ve been actually forced to think about things that happened in the past.”
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The songs of an enslaved people, sung by the newly freed, to pay for their education and ultimately to become part of an opera that educates others.
“Everyone that attends this opera will get an opportunity to hear the impact of that era and how it can still touch and tickle our souls, today,” Clark said.
“As we go forward as a people, I want it to change your life as much as it’s changed my life,” Townsend said.
She said she hopes the opera will prompt people in the audience to think about something bigger than themselves.
“I also want them to say to themselves, ah, see? This was a time when America, after a civil war, where we fought each other, this was a time when we all came together and celebrated our togetherness,” Thompson added.
Seattle Opera performs “Jubilee” from October 12 through 26.
Heather Bosch is an award-winning anchor and reporter on KIRO Newsradio. You can read more of her stories here. Follow Heather on X, or email her here.
