NBC TV, Leontyne Price and Opera Casting in the Civil Rights Era

The year 2020 saw the confluence of two important trends in opera: the rise of broadcasting through livestreams and digital productions, and the demand for greater casting of singers of color. Both of these movements were born of necessity as opera companies adapted in the wake of the pandemic and the Black Lives Matter protests. These developments have often been treated as new and unconnected, but there has been a longstanding tradition of using media technology to reform operatic culture, including when it comes to racial justice. This lecture by Danielle Ward-Griffin, assistant professor of musicology at Rice University, examines television and its influence on opera casting practices during the early civil rights movement. She traces how the NBC's color-blind "Integration without Identification" policy was praised for eliminating stereotypes and hiring Black performers in its prestige arts programs. Focusing on the NBC Opera appearances of Leontyne Price, especially her debut in "Tosca" (1955), Ward-Griffin's research explores how television promised new opportunities for Black singers at a time when they were still barred from many roles in the opera house. Drawing upon the NBC History Files and kinescopes from the Library of Congress, as well as NBC papers from the Wisconsin Historical Society, Ward-Griffin argues that television - particularly its aesthetic of "realism"- influenced the perception of Price's performances, and by extension, ideas of who could credibly perform standard opera roles. This lecture was made possible with the generous support of the American Musicological Society.
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