The Emperor Jones (opera)

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The Emperor Jones
Opera by Louis Gruenberg
Eugene O'Neill, after whose play the composer wrote the libretto
LibrettistGruenberg, Kathleen de Jaffa
LanguageEnglish
Based onThe Emperor Jones
by Eugene O'Neill
Premiere
January 7, 1933 (1933-01-07)
Metropolitan Opera, New York

The Emperor Jones is an

negro spirituals
, The Emperor Jones was the eleventh American opera to premiere at the Met, and has continued to be performed into the 21st century, albeit rarely.

Background

Shortly after becoming General Manager of the Metropolitan Opera in 1908, Giulio Gatti-Casazza had set a goal of producing new English language operas by American composers. During his time at the Met, the company staged the world premieres of thirteen American operas. However, while the composers of these operas were American, only three of them actually had American subjects—Charles Cadman's Shanewis (1918), Howard Hanson's Merry Mount (1934), and Louis Gruenberg's The Emperor Jones.

The Emperor Jones by American playwright Eugene O'Neill had premiered in 1920 and was immensely popular. After reading the play, Gruenberg approached O'Neill with the idea of making it into an opera and discussed the possibilities with him over a two-year period. In 1930 O'Neill gave Gruenberg the rights to adapt the play making any changes he saw fit but refused to have anything to do with creating the libretto, despite the urging of the composer. In the end it was compiled by Kathleen de Jaffa in collaboration with Gruenberg. The actual lines were taken almost verbatim from the play. The only two significant changes were the addition of a chanting chorus for the orchestral prelude and interlude, similar to a Greek chorus, and the death of Emperor Jones. In the play, he is killed by the natives while in the opera he shoots himself with a silver bullet as they are closing in on him. The libretto was finished by 1931, and Gruenberg rented a cottage in Old Orchard, Maine, where he composed the opera over a period of fourteen months.[1]

When the vocal score was complete, Gruenberg showed it to the Austrian conductor

Entartete Musik, "degenerate music", a label applied to virtually all works by Jewish composers). In the meantime, Olin Downes, the critic for The New York Times, had also seen the score and recommended it to Gatti-Casazza, who accepted it for production during the Met's 1932/1933 season.[2]

Performance history

Metropolitan Opera House
on 39th St, where The Emperor Jones premiered on January 7, 1933

The Emperor Jones had its world premiere on January 7, 1933, at the Metropolitan Opera with

Leoncavallo's Pagliacci
.

Despite the mixed reviews, The Emperor Jones enjoyed a fair amount of initial success and won Gruenberg the

Metropolitan Opera House in February 1934, it was not seen again in New York City until 2001 when it was revived by a small company, Operaworks, in a 55-seat theatre using a digitized virtual orchestra in place of musicians with baritone Fredrick Redd in the title role.[7][8] In 2009, the opera was revived in Italy for two performances at the Teatro delle Muse in Ancona with Nmon Ford in the title role and a full orchestra and chorus conducted by Bruno Bartoletti.[9]

Roles

Lawrence Tibbett who created the title role of The Emperor Jones
Role Voice type Premiere Cast, January 7, 1933
(Conductor: Tullio Serafin)[10]
Brutus Jones, Emperor Jones, a former Pullman porter and ex-convict baritone Lawrence Tibbett
Henry Smithers, a Cockney trader and Jones's underling tenor Marek Windheim
Native Woman soprano Pearl Besuner
Congo, The Witch Doctor (dancer) Hemsley Winfield

Synopsis

Setting: An unnamed island in the West Indies in the early part of the 20th century

Orchestral prelude

A chanting chorus calls for the death of Emperor Jones and an insistent drumbeat is heard in the distance.

Act 1

Brutus Jones, an

African American ex-Pullman porter, gambler, and escaped convict had stowed away from the United States to an island in the West Indies several years previously. There, he had set himself up as the island's Emperor and during that time made himself rich at the expense of the natives as well as earning a reputation as a cruel tyrant. He now sits in his "palace" in the final days of his reign. His underling, the cockney trader Smithers, tells Jones that the natives are planning a revolt against him. Full of bravado, Jones tells Smithers of the power which he has held over the island and that he has convinced the natives that he can only be killed by a silver bullet which he wears around his neck on a chain. Nevertheless, he tells Smithers that he is retiring as Emperor, has hidden supplies in the jungle, and plans make his escape to Martinique
with all the money he has stolen from the islanders.

Orchestral interlude

Again a chanting chorus is heard

Act 2

Jones lies exhausted in the jungle, unable to find any of the supplies he had hidden. As darkness falls, and the drumbeats become louder and more insistent, he is beset by hallucinations from his past life. When he sees a vision of the man he had murdered in a

negro spiritual, "It's Me, O Lord, Standin' in de Need of Prayer". At dawn, he is still trying to find his way out of the jungle when a witch doctor appears. He grabs Jones and starts dancing wildly around him. When he is surrounded by the soldiers and natives who have been hunting him, Jones realizes that all is lost, puts the silver bullet into his gun, places the gun against his head and fires. Smithers stands over the dead Emperor and utters the final words of the opera: "Dead as an 'erring. Well, Gor blimey, yer died in a grand style any'ow."[11]
The curtain falls as the drumbeats fade and the natives carry off Jones's body.

Recordings

There are no complete commercial recordings of The Emperor Jones. The most famous piece from the opera, "It's Me, O Lord, Standin' in de Need of Prayer", was recorded on 19 January 1934 by Lawrence Tibbett and released by

Sony
Master Works series.

See also

Notes and references

  1. ^ Shapiro (1994); Gauss (1994); Time Magazine (May 23, 1932)
  2. ^ a b Sturm (1981)
  3. ^ Hurwitt (2004) p. 895
  4. ^ Nash, Joe (2001)
  5. ^ Kirk (2001) p. 180
  6. ^ Nettles (2003) p. 16
  7. ^ Tommasini (February 16, 2001)
  8. ^ Eugene O'Neil Review
  9. ^ Il Resto del Carlino (January 21, 2009)
  10. ^ Premiere cast from the Metropolitan Opera Archives
  11. ^ Smithers speaks Cockney English in both the play and the opera. The line in Standard English would be: "Dead as a herring. Well, God bless me, you died in a grand style anyhow"
  12. ^ a b Lebendige Vergangenheit 89576, Germany.

Sources

External links

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