Word: lampblack
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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However romanticized its view of a Harlem that never quite existed, Queenie Pie rings with authority. There are perhaps unconscious echoes of Porgy and Bess in characters and settings; almost the whole second act takes place on a kind of Kittiwah Island. But instead of Gershwin's "lampblack Negroisms," as Ellington aptly called them, Queenie Pie has the authentic sass and soul of black America. This is what really happened to Bess after she left Catfish Row. Following its three-week run in Philadelphia, Queenie Pie moves to Washington's Kennedy Center for a month. After that, there ought...
...received mixed notices and was thought by many to be a failure; yet now it is considered by some to be the great American opera. Blacks were initially offended by its implicit Uncle Tomism; Duke Ellington declared, "The times are here to debunk Gershwin's lampblack Negroisms." Yet black singers have sprung to prominence in its roles, among them Todd Duncan (the first Porgy), Leontyne Price and William Warfield (in a 1952 revival) and Clamma Dale (in the 1976 Houston Grand Opera production). Today an opera written by a white composer that depicted a group of fighting, wenching, gambling...