Many historians say that “Morgiane” is the oldest existing opera written by a Black American. The most important work of composer Edmond Dédé, “Morgiane” tells the story of a mother’s efforts to rescue her young daughter after she is kidnapped and forced into an engagement with a sultan.
“Morgiane” is based on themes from “Ali Baba and the 40 Thieves”, and in spite of its importance in history, it was just recently performed for audiences for the first time — 138 years after it was composed.
“There is this story that we have told that people of color are only now becoming part of the timeline of classical music,” Patrick Quigley, the artistic director designate of Washington, D.C.’s Opera Lafayette, told CNN. “And the reality is that in the United States – in the person of Dédé – Black people were (already) participating in classical music.”
Born a free Black man in New Orleans in 1827, Dédé’s love growing up was to become a violin prodigy, a composer and a conductor. His parents were free Creoles of color who moved to New Orleans from the French West Indies around 1809, and with Dédé’s father being a bandmaster for a local military group, Dédé took his first music lessons from him.
He went on to study under Black composers including Charles Richard Lambert, a free black music teacher and conductor who had moved to New Orleans from New York. Just as he began to hone his skills, the Civil War neared and Dédé fled to France to escape racism in 1848.
There, he studied music at the Paris Conservatoire and his music career bloomed as he went on to write and conduct at the Grand Théâtre in Bordeaux. Besides music, he was also an abolitionist and a member of the Institute d’Afrique, a group that worked to abolish slavery.
Dédé came back to the U.S. during the Jim Crow era. He was not allowed to perform in theaters and was restricted to only Black churches. Feeling insulted and traumatized, Dédé went back to France and never returned, a report stated.
Dédé went on to write 250 songs, ballets and orchestral pieces. He completed the score for his 545-page “Morgaine”in 1887 but he didn’t live to see it get performed.
Following his death in 1901, Dédé’s “Morgiane” – his magnum opus — disappeared, like many works of Black composers of his time.
Thankfully, in 2014, New Orleans Opera Creole founders Givonna Joseph and Aria Mason found a digital copy of “Morgiane.” Dedicated to sharing works by composers of African descent, Opera Creole started a process to share “Morgiane” with the world.
In 2023, with the help of Quigley, the artistic director designate of Washington, D.C.’s Opera Lafayette, New Orleans Opera Creole started working with several musicians and historians to bring the opera to an audience for the first time.
What they did first was to transcribe nearly 6,000 measures of music into modern notation and at the the end of their work, they heard music that had not been played in over 100 years, they told CBS.
“It’s this fabulous combination of so many different styles of music, both European and American all together in one place,” Quigley said.
On January 24 this year, excerpts from “Morgiane” were played at New Orleans’ St. Louis Cathedral, which is believed to be where Dédé was baptized. The following month, on February 3, the entire opera was performed at Opera Lafayette for the first time.
Quigley, who conducted the performance, described it as “an incredible moment for Washington, D.C. and an “incredible moment for American music.”
“Morgiane” was further performed in New York City and College Park, Maryland.
“It is with great pride and humility that I would like to say welcome home Edmond Dédé, welcome home,” Joseph said of the performances.
