Victor Hugo's son did the translations of Shakespeare into French which Boito used to work on his libretto for Verdi's Otello. In the introduction to his translation there's a long passage in which Hugo explains that of course Othello isn't really black, that Desdemona couldn't possibly have fallen in love with him if he was: He's obviously an Arab or of some strange and romantic race that makes him not really black. But in the margin of his own personal copy, Boito has jotted a succinct and pithy note: Pertanto sta negro! "But he is black!" And this is arguably the controlling thought behind Boito's libretto, if not Verdi's opera. From Aida and Otello to Porgy and Bess and Lost in the Stars, we as blacks have been operationalized by white composers so that there seems to be a kind of massive charge running from white musicians to us as black subjects. How did you and your brother, Christopher, who devised the story, and your cousin, Thulani, who wrote the words, feel as blacks usurping this particular position in what's certainly perceived by most opera goers as an all white field (with the possible exception of Scott Joplin's Treemonisha)—a field in which blacks have traditionally been the objects of white operas?
Well, we felt very good about it. We said: This is an opportunity to have our own voice—to deal with our own history, our own characters, and with our own people, in our own voice. Blacks have always been the object of operas: Today I was just looking at Four Saints in Three Acts by Gertrude Stein and Virgil Thomson. Black people have always been symbolic for white people, particularly in opera; in a sense it frees whites to deal in a mythological way with other subjects through us. In X I was trying to deal with our own myths. I always thought of Malcolm's as one of the great stories—and myths—of our day. I felt it was really ripe for operatic treatment.
Now, opera is often an intellectually beleaguered art. Because of its direct connections with the theater, people have a tendency not to take it seriously at the time it's being done: It's very theatrical, grandiose—deals with the passions. But as soon as the opera sits awhile, it becomes the object of a great deal of intellectual energy by critics. Was it Joseph Kerman in Opera and Drama who said that examining its opera is the way you test the health of a culture? Were you at all weighted down by this contradiction between the frivolity of opera, on the one hand, and the terrible, terrible seriousness with which people can take it, on the other?
No, I don't think that affected me. I was never convinced of opera's frivolity to begin with. There's a tradition of light, comic opera. And there's a tradition of poorly put together melodramas. But when I looked at my models for opera, at the operas I admire, I really felt that you could create something epic; you could create something tragic; that you could make a unique theatrical experience, heightened by music. And that's what we were trying for. If anything, the criticism has been that we weren't frivolous enough. But I never thought frivolity was appropriate. I felt I could have fun with Malcolm X and fun with the times and the characters. But I felt it should be serious fun. I would play with it, but I knew that underneath was something deadly serious.
What were your first experiences of opera? How did they affect you?
My first experience listening to anything like an opera was probably Kurt Weill. When I was a child, my father had the records of The Three Penny Opera, with Lotte Lenya—and I was terrified of it! I remember listening to it Sunday mornings: every Sunday morning he'd play it. And I'd hide under the table.
So opera was very powerful?
Yes, it was very powerful. My father had some Wagner records. But I wasn't really interested in them at that point. It took me a long time to get over the racism of Wagner to reach the music. In school, at Yale, I did an intense study of nineteenth century opera, particularly Wagner and Strauss. I had to do a lot of analyses, particularly of Wagner. Later on when I began my own exploration of opera, the first ones I attended at the Met were mostly Wagner. I learned a lot from them; from Parsifal, which is one of my favorite Wagner operas, and Die Walküre, which is another of my favorites. They provided interesting models.
You mentioned Parsifal. I was wondering whether Parsifal might have been, in some ways, a model for X. If not Parsifal, possibly Tannhäuser
They were the first two operas I ever saw.
Tannhäuser and Parsifal? The reason I ask is because you have that wonderful, spiritual climax in X, where Malcolm, in Mecca, is with the chorus of praying men. And it's very hard to see it and not to think of Parsifal.
Yes. Basically that's about the search for faith - it's about faith; and, in Parsifal, about Christianity. If you want to make an argument for where minimalism began, you could say that Parsifal was the first minimalist opera. Probably the second act of Parsifal - I'd start with that. Bringing back motifs, using thematic material in different sections of the opera to link it, insisting on recurring themes - that all comes from Wagner. I was building toward that moment in the third act - I always thought of that as the climax - the moment in Mecca, when Malcolm sees his name: El-Shabazz - naming is so much a part of black culture. Where he discovers his religion, he discovers who he is. That moment where he does it is the resolution of a kind of quest.
When we were talking last night, you mentioned Janacek as a favorite composer. Do Janacek's works have anything to do with, or any bearing on, X?
Well, I came to Janacek a little later. I had already started writing X. My director, Rhoda Levine, had done the premiere of House of the Dead, which is one of Janacek's greatest operas. She'd also done a number of his other operas. She'd told me about him, and as a birthday present she gave me the records. So I began to study it. I was fascinated with it. But it will probably influence me more in the next opera I do.
Janacek, then, is a recent enthusiasm?
Yes. I think what's interesting about him is his ability actually to deal with melodrama, to deal with family situations in a fresh way. And also his use of orchestration - he's a beautiful, a wonderful orchestrator. He really uses the orchestra to paint with - and the call and response between the orchestra and the voices. The voice says something and the orchestra responds. It's a very different form from what I do.
What were the circumstances around Xs beginning - how did you come to this particular opera that a month ago we all saw at the New York State Theater at Lincoln Center? How did it grow up?
It was originally my brother's idea, about five years ago. He said, "Why don't we do a musical about Malcolm X?" I said, "A musical?" I couldn't do that. I thought, well, maybe I could do it as an opera. Then, three years ago, we brought in Thulani; and we started to write it. We received some grants for it. Finally it was done at the Kitchen, in downtown New York City. We did a series of workshops - one at the American Music Theater Festival in Philadelphia. It was a whole learning process, because none of us had ever done an opera before - though our director, Rhoda Levine, had had lots of opera experience. The libretto was written - mostly- first. I worked with it, edited it, then set it to music. Sometimes I would change lines around - I always brought in more ensemble material. That's my tendency. We started from the beginning with a synopsis. My brother would submit a synopsis. We'd argue about it, the three of us. We'd tear it apart - then we'd go back to it. But after about a year or so we had the structure together. And we'd already written almost two acts.
In terms either of the writing or of the production, do any incidents or anecdotes stand out?
Mostly I remember my director having problems with the fact that I liked having orchestral interludes in the opera. She didn't know what to do with them.
Interludes [laughter], just like a real opera!
In a way she didn't understand what happened when the words stopped. And I just said, you know ... it can stop. I mean there doesn't have to be talk all the time. It's not a play. In Louise's aria, I used to have a long orchestral interlude, and I didn't have the recitative leading up to it - that was written later. I thought, well, maybe I could put recitative over this and it would help. It did. It really became a very nice moment in the opera. For me there've been a lot of funny things; for example, in the production you saw, the characters Street and Elijah were played by the same singer. Originally Street was a bass-baritone part and Elijah was a tenor. When I auditioned Thomas Young, and we agreed that he would be Elijah, he told me he was singing in a club downstairs in my building, at Manhattan Plaza. He said why don't you come hear me. I went; and I'd never heard a jazz singer as good as he was before. I'd already accepted him as an opera singer - to do Elijah Muhammed's part. Now I said, well, you have to do Street too.
The first time we hear Malcolm; it's as the child's voice—a very rarefied boy soprano singing just after his mother's mad song. This is followed by Malcolm's long silence—almost twenty minutes. After this terribly weighty quietness from just the one character—of course, music is going on all around that silence and certainly that's effective—the next music from Malcolm is a man's voice. Yes, it's very strong. Indeed, the opera struck me as very richly musical. In the generous New York Times coverage during the week before the premiere, there was some talk of it's being a jazz opera. But what I heard seemed to be a lot closer to the tonalities of German music in the beginning of this century - Berg, Schoenberg; even if it wasn't using their serial techniques. In that sense you could say the music was very conservative. How does this assertion strike you?
It's funny, because music has been so divided. What's radical in music is a somewhat different thing today: the use of an improviser, I think; employing certain rhythms and repetition—those kinds of things. Academics have tried to define musical development only in terms of harmonic and melodic material. But basically the end of that kind of development was the twelve-tone school. You had responses to it, from the minimalists, to the Cage stuff, to the electronic stuff. I think X hearkens back to a more conservative mode. But then, I'm very interested in form—form in music. Musically, I've never been able to accept the arbitrariness of chance operations. Really, music has been hiding behind certain intellectual concepts, or—better—hiding by not allowing itself to be expressive, by not allowing itself to be direct. And directness is important to me.
I remember years and years ago, when I was, ever so briefly, at City College, Rudolf Bing came and talked to us when he was head of the Metropolitan Opera. There were some of us there who were interested in opera. I'd been involved in writing one myself, only a year before. But I recall that, basically, Bing told us: "Don't bother." Your opera, he said, will never get produced. He said it very nicely. But basically he was saying, "Don't waste your time writing an opera." Now of course this was twenty-five years ago.
He was right.
The actual mechanics of getting an opera on the boards—from the point of view of someone sitting in the audience, it looks daunting! How does that happen?
Well, we were told a number of times that we should scale down the piece, make it a music theater piece so that you could do it in repertory theaters—that kind of thing. But we decided early on that it was for an opera house. They're going to have to swallow this one whole. [Laughter.] It's been an interesting phenomenon just how we've been able to get into this position—how we've been able to get City Opera to accept us. Actually, I never really approached them. They came to look at the opera at BAM [the Brooklyn Academy of Music] and that's how we got there.
It was originally done at BAM?
No, we were doing a workshop at BAM; and people from the City Opera came to see it. But I think basically what there is, is a void. No contemporary American opera has really taken in people's imagination. The reason X became the phenomenon it has, and has had the success it has, is basically because we stepped into a situation where there was nothing there. There wasn't that much of any quality. And so it was unique. It had very little to do with the black and white issues; there just weren't that many good operas around—period. The field was really open. I think that as a black composer, I had a tremendous advantage, in that our tradition has never strayed that far from the voice. When we write music, when I improvise, I can sing what I improvise. For me music has never been that far from the vocal traditions. I was talking to one of my contemporaries, about the black composers I know, and I said, 'You know, it's really open for us." For example, the whole academic school of modern classical music, from after the 1940s—people who have been inspired by Schoenberg and Berg and Webern and those people— basically haven't been able to create an opera that anyone wants to hear [Laughter.] And so, basically, there's a real opportunity for the Afro-American tradition to become the dominant force in opera in America. I really feel it.
Don't we encounter racism when we start to juxtapose blackness and opera? Didn't you encounter some of it?
Yes, of course. Definitely that's true. There's an attempt to dismiss what I've done. But that's something you have to—
How so?
Well, the New York Times critic, for example, said that basically X was just a polemic, and that it was just about words, it wasn't about music— basically he wasn't able to deal with what's in the music at all. And then the next Times critic used an argument about vernacular art. This was Rockwell—it was really a funny thing. He was very condescending. He said, it's a very good effort for a first opera, etc., but he wished that we would become looser. He compared it with Duke Ellington's Queenie Pie. He said that Queenie Pie came from an era when black composers felt less self-conscious about letting their vernacular roots show and allowing their audience to have a good time. [Laughter.] Here we go again. I think that there was this kind of response. What was amazing to me was that to see the response of the audience. We were sold out for every performance!
You had an incredible amount of support from the community. Any opera that I go to and my mother goes to, three days later (without a word from me, either: when we talked to each other, a week later, we were both surprised that each other had seen it)—I mean, that opera has won over the community!
We got standing ovations. But in the Times piece they were trying to dismiss it almost as if it hadn't happened. They were trying to dismiss what had happened. The work was a success. It managed to communicate to an audience. No one would have had that response if it were just "about words"—whatever that's supposed to mean. Also he said I had to make my ideas gray.
What an insult! As opposed to black or white?
Yes. I think that people are wrestling with the whole notion of black art being serious art; white folks always have a problem dealing with the notion that this is a serious work of art. I would say that my opera is no more vernacular than Lulu. If you're going to say that's vernacular, fine. But to talk about "vernacular art"—those arguments are so confused. Shakespeare is vernacular, you know. But they're not talking about it in those terms, because when an American critic says that, it can't be said without racism. It's about class distinctions and it's about racial distinctions. It's about those kinds of things and not really about the art or the work.
I only saw the first Times review, and it was clearly a very tentative review by somebody who was—equally clearly—neither comfortable with the Event nor comfortable with the music. The Times, remember, is not a highbrow culture organ. It's furiously middle-brow; and nobody seriously interested in the development of art—especially anyone black—is going to read it as anything else. I assume that a good number of the black people who attended those sold-out performances knew how to read those very frightened, up-tight and oh-so-predictable reviews. And I would imagine that most people who had heard X, then read those reviews, would have felt, at the very least: "Wouldn't it have been nice if this man had said something about what happened last night in the theater." On whatever level: either on the stage, in the orchestra, or with the audience.
Well, the Times critics couldn't. Of course I believe X works on all these levels. But I think that they couldn't possibly, considering who they are, speak out: That just won't happen right away. It's very funny: Critics outside New York were able to do that. But New York is too political. It's too much about their stance on cultural politics, not about reviewing a work. And trying to see where the work falls in terms of what they're trying to advocate.
Whenever you conceive of yourself as an arbiter of culture, rather than as a creator of culture, you become purely a political mouthpiece— of the most vulgar sort. And, sadly, that's the problem with most New York critics who have a major outlet. And it doesn't matter what the political slant of the work under review. But think how strange it must have been to be a white critic in that audience. They were in another world—a world they'd never been in before. We were in another world—let's face it—that most of us certainly haven't been in very often. But it was ours. It wasn't theirs. And that must have been very upsetting. The upsetting part I suspect was not that that world was hostile to them. That, they—some of them—could probably have dealt with. Rather it was ignoring them. And that, I'm sure, was far more disorienting. After all: What do those reviews, largely, say? Please pay more attention to the traditional values we whites have imposed on operas about blacks that we've written and approved of in the past: looseness, entertainment, melody. And what excludes them is a major opera house full of black people, giving a standing ovation to a black-authored work that's musically rigorous, run through with wit, and steeped in passion.
I found it funny that no one would say what the audience was—the fact that the audience who turned out for X was so overwhelmingly black, and that that's unique for an event of this kind. There's been no phenomenon like it. I felt a little disappointed with the reports, in those terms; but I guess I shouldn't have. That's the major sense in which I feel I haven't had the recognition for what was really achieved. But that happens all the time.
There's a kind of tradition in conducting opera in New York, for some reason—certainly all the operas that come out of Lincoln Center—to conduct them small. Do you know what I mean? I remember Levine conducting Tristan one evening as though it were Debussy. Did you feel that the conductor conducted it with the sonic richness you wanted? Were you happy with the sound of the opera, in the house?
No. But there are reasons for that. The acoustic balance. The house is very difficult. The orchestra basically had to play very quietly through out the whole thing to have the singers be heard. Ideally, you would want to be in a position where the orchestra could play out so that the rich ness of the music comes through more. It's kind of like hearing the music through cotton gauze: because they couldn't really play out. Some of that had to do with some of the performers having trouble projecting through the orchestra in that house. But if I do a record of it or some thing, that won't be a problem. You'll be able to hear everything.
What was jazz doing in the opera for you and what is rhythm doing in the opera for you as a composer?
Okay. In terms of the so-called 'jazz parts," I think that basically I was using them to set up time and place—the early sections in Boston.
You were using jazz for musical scene-painting.
Yes. I tried to get into the big-band period—Lionel Hampton and Duke—because we were talking about dance halls and dance hall stuff. I was trying to use the music to create the scene. Then I thought I would set up a healthy tension between that and the expectation, so that when you actually get to the dance hall, the music goes somewhere else. Finally you realize that the dance hall is really about a kind of alienation, and not really so much about the dance. In his aria at the end of the opera, Malcolm sings, "You can jitterbug and prance, but you'll never run the ball." I took that as a model for the dance hall scene. In terms of rhythmic use, I see something more complicated. In the opera, I'm trying to use the rhythms as the building blocks of the drama. As the rhythm becomes more complex, as there's more rhythmic density, you get a certain tension.
There's a great deal of cross rhythm.
Yes. There's a clash of rhythm, of rhythmic structures, using repetition to create tension. I find that rhythm like that creates tension. And I use—I guess, the word would be—antiphony, antiphonal choirs, basically pitting them against one another, while you have one recurring line. For these moments, using the chorus in that way, I divide up the chorus in different parts and then have them go at the same time. So you have these warring choirs. I do that with the orchestra, too. I might use radically different material for different parts of the orchestra, and have them occur simultaneously, so that there's a sense of development out of conflict between opposing musical ideas. That was really something I tried to work on in the opera all the time. Also the use of rhythm as tonality. In a way I think my study of South Indian music inspired me to that. I studied with a master drummer. Certain talas have a sort of—well, when you switch from one tala to another, from one pattern to another, the change is very significant. It's not only the raga—or scale—that determines the emotional impact, but also the rhythmic structure: how you subdivide the rhythms. I tried to be pretty systematic about this. I was very careful about where I introduced new rhythmic material—usually at very significant points in the opera. In the opera, rhythm is always the metaphor for violence—for the underlying violence. Even though there might be a melody above it, and, if you isolate the melodic material, it might even sound gentle, what's going on underneath is tense—the inner workings of a demonic machine. That's what I wanted to create: a kind of machine going on and on.