The African-American spiritual played an important role in the lives of enslaved people prior to emancipation. The songs fostered a sense of togetherness, a sense of hope, and sometimes even imparted wisdom on how to survive. Opera and theater director Tazewell Thompson remembers the first time he heard one.
“I was just transfixed to hear the sound,” said Thompson. “You can tell it was the sound of a Black artist. But to hear the lyrics and to hear the compassion and the heart.”
That first encounter with spirituals for Thompson came at a convent in upstate New York where he’d been sent at an early age. His family’s house burned down in the Bronx, and his parents were deemed unfit to care for him. One day after class his music teacher and mentor Sister Benvenuta, who introduced him to a world of music, took him aside.
“She said to me, now when you leave us and you go on with your life, you need to learn all you can about your people through these Negro spirituals from a group called the Fisk Jubilee Singers,” Thompson recalled.
Their story and these spirituals have resonated through the years for Thompson. And this weekend, the curtain rises on an opera he’s created called Jubilee, which makes its world premiere with the Seattle Opera.
‘On to something’
The production tells the story of the original Fisk Jubilee Singers, many of whom were formerly enslaved people. They attended a start-up liberal arts college in Nashville, Tenn. right after the end of the Civil War. The choir was formed to raise money for the school.
“They started out locally and maybe into the next town or city, and they were singing songs of the day,” said Thompson. “They were doing fairly well but not making any headway, not raising funds.”
When the choir’s leader heard them singing spirituals around campus, he got an idea and suggested they start performing these songs too. Thompson said the singers resisted.
“It reminded them of what their families or their acquaintances would sing in the plantations, working in the fields; working indoors,” said Thompson. “It reminded them of how they would comfort the sick and the wounded from the war. They loved the songs."
"The songs had a central feeling for them. They knew that these were their songs."Jubilee director and creator Tazewell Thompson
Thompson said the group of singers did not want to commercialize the spirituals. “It gives us [the Jubilee singers] a sense of spiritual healing, every now and then, to sing these songs. But the songs, ultimately, are not something we want to share with a white audience.”
The singers eventually relented and started performing spirituals across the south and eventually across the country.
“And they found that they were doing really, really well singing spirituals,” said Thompson. “When the hat was passed, it was quite an overflow of change, of ducats, of assets that were coming their way. So they knew they were on to something.”
The opera
Years after that first bit of inspiration from his music teacher, Sister Benvenuta, Thompson saw a public television documentary about the Fisk Jubilee Singers. That compelled him to write a capella musical about the group, and then he sent inquiries to operas around the country. He said Christina Scheppelmann – who recently left the Seattle Opera after a long stint – replied immediately with interest.
“‘Don't get rid of any of the spirituals, because they're glorious’,” Thompson remembered Scheppelmann telling him. “‘I love the vocal arrangements, and find yourself an orchestrator, because I'm going to give you 48 musicians in the pit.’ Well, I was over the moon.”
Then Thompson began the monumental task of sorting through more than thousand spirituals and narrow it down to a few dozen.
“If you're going to tell a story, then let the spirituals do this. Do the talking for you, do the singing for you,” Thompson said. “Choose spirituals that are going to reveal the scene that is also going to propel you on to the next scene. Choose spirituals that are going to reveal character.”
Queen Victoria
Among the noteworthy international performances for the Fisk Jubilee singers was an audience with Queen Victoria. It’s a story Thompson knew he had to depict in the opera.
“I wanted to tell this not because they were singing before royalty, but because she was not only fascinated and loved their voices – she requested two songs in particular that she wanted to hear, ‘Steal Away’ and ‘Go Down Moses,’” said Thompson.
“When she saw them, when they were singing before her, what really caught her eye – and she talked about it as if they weren't even standing before them – she said ‘look at them, their skin color. Some are tawny and the color of cinnamon; and some the color of tea with milk; some the color of a midnight sky; some the color of coal.”
Thompson said Queen Victoria was so fascinated by the look of the Fisk Jubilee Singers, she commissioned a floor-to-ceiling painting of them.
“When she died, in her will,” Thompson said. “She bequeathed this floor-to-ceiling painting to Fisk University, where it still hangs in Jubilee Hall.”
‘The heart and soul’
Thompson said he hopes those who come to see Seattle Opera’s Jubilee will come away with an appreciation for the original Fisk Jubilee Singers.
“They will love the story of these wonderful young men and women who put everything on the line…who were brutalized in various towns, who could not get reservations in hotels, who would buy tickets to get on a train, and then their tickets would be torn up,” Thompson said.
“Without spirituals, we would not have blues, we would not have jazz. We would not have gospel,” Thompson said. “Because in spirituals are the blueprint, the scaffold, the spine, the heart and soul of all great American music”
The Seattle Opera presents Jubilee Oct. 12 through Oct. 26th at McCaw Hall.