Amy Beach's Cabildo: An American Opera

• Other Authors: Powlison, Nicole M. (Nicole Marie) (authoraut)
• Format: Others
• Language: English; English
• Published: Florida State University
• Subjects: Music
• Online Access: http://purl.flvc.org/fsu/fd/FSU_2017SP_Powlison_fsu_0071E_13860

In June 1932 Amy Beach (1867–1944) arrived at her studio at the MacDowell Colony in Peterborough, New Hampshire, to begin working in one of the few major musical genres that she had yet to attempt in her career: an opera, called Cabildo. The libretto for the chamber opera, given to her by Atlanta author, playwright, and fellow Colonist Nan Bagby Stephens (1883–1946), was based on Stephens's own play with the same title. Cabildo's creators had to negotiate the multifaceted artistic expression of American identity through the work's music and plot. The English libretto, rich with local color in sections of dialect, was blended with the sounds of Creole folk tunes and Beach's own art songs to spin a romantic tale of dashing pirates and ghostly lovers, set during the height of the Battle of New Orleans, the final conflict of the War of 1812. Well received at its modest premiere at the University of Georgia in 1945, Beach's only opera remains unpublished and rarely studied or performed. A primary component of this project is the critical edition of Amy Beach's only opera, Cabildo, op. 149, completed in 1932. This edition is prepared to professional publication standards and provides a resource for both scholarly study and performance. The original draft and performance manuscripts of the score from archives at the University of New Hampshire and the University of Missouri-Kansas City provide the source material for the edition. In addition to the critical edition, the dissertation provides a "thick description" of Cabildo that locates the opera in its historical context. Relying on primary source materials such as Beach's diaries and newspaper or magazine articles, this description places the work in the composer's life as a new type of project that comes at the very end of her career, and an opportunity to collaborate with another woman. The description also identifies musical works with contemporary themes or methods to draw comparisons between Cabildo and its contemporaries, placing it in the context of the varied styles of American English-language opera in the 1930s. Cabildo represents one way in which a particular American opera expresses national identity through music and plot. Composers such as Beach attempted to negotiate the aesthetic conundrum that demanded that American art music be of the highest cosmopolitan standards while still having something distinctly "American" about it. This was complicated by the desire of many composers to incorporate American musics that lay outside the European musical heritage, including the simultaneously local and exotic musical materials from African American and Native American cultures. Cabildo exemplifies this complex negotiation of American identity in opera: it is an American opera with a libretto in English, treating a historical topic important to the history of the United States, yet incorporating a mix of Creole folk songs and dialect with music in Beach's own style, all set in the exotic location of New Orleans. By uniting a significant event from national history with a distinctive regional music set in a familiar Romantic style, Beach and Stephens created an opera that is at once intrinsically American and still appealing to a diverse and cosmopolitan audience. === A Dissertation submitted to the College of Music in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. === Spring Semester 2017. === April 5, 2017. === 1930s, Amy Beach, Cabildo, Nan Bagby Stephens, Opera === Includes bibliographical references. === Douglass Seaton, Professor Directing Dissertation; Douglas Fisher, University Representative; Sarah Eyerly, Committee Member; Stanley Pelkey, Committee Member.