March 30, 2023

A Lost Operatic Masterpiece...

...Written By White Men For An All-Black Cast Was Found And Restored. Can It Be Produced Without Controversy?

BY FREDRIC DANNEN

Supporters say Blues Opera, authored by two Great American Songbook icons and reconstructed by the music adviser for Tár, should be staged in a post-George Floyd world.

John Mauceri devotes a good part of his busy career to restoring lost music. The American conductor and scholar, who recently served as the music adviser for the Academy Award-nominated Tár, uncovered and put back vital missing pieces of Leonard Bernstein’s operetta Candide. He reconstructed the overture to Ben-Hur, after MGM had inexplicably thrown away the sheet music of that classic film score, for a performance at the Hollywood Bowl with the ailing composer Miklós Rózsa onstage in a wheelchair. Mauceri jokingly calls himself a cross between Indiana Jones and Dr. Frankenstein, and depending on your point of view, he is either an excavator of rare artifacts or a man stitching up cadavers. Over the past two years, in collaboration with another conductor, Michael Gildin, he has been restoring a work ardently coveted by music aficionados but given up for dead: a lost opera written by two eminences of the Great American Songbook — composer Harold Arlen (“Over the Rainbow,” “Stormy Weather”) and lyricist Johnny Mercer (“Skylark,” “Moon River”).

The work is called Blues Opera. It took shape between 1954 and 1958 but...

More News

Look at the Old Girl Now, Fellas!
In 1967, Pearl Bailey appeared in an all-Black Hello, Dolly! It was a sensation, smashing preconceptions, showcasing civil rights, and announcing a new era on Broadway......
Read More
The Sound of Hollywood
A 16-CD set release of the complete Hollywood Bowl Orchestra recordings with John Mauceri....
Read More
We All Make Mystiques
The unforgettable night in New York when Jackie Kennedy watched as opera’s greatest diva sang Tosca and bungled the high C......
Read More
Wagnerian Army
Among the many confusions about the private Russian army known as “the Wagner Group” is how to pronounce its name. Reporters and pundits seem to vacillate between “Wag-ner” and “Vog-ner.” Also, nobody seems to know how the group got its name....
Read More
Cate Blanchett Plays Herself
The star of “Tár” reunites with her opening-scene partner for a conversation about listening to music, going before audiences, and the art of acting in life and in the movies....
Read More
The View from Here
Why isn’t John Williams treated like Igor Stravinsky?...
Read More
And now on BBC Music Magazine!
Actor Cate Blanchett and writer/director Todd Field talk to Michael Beek about creating their riveting psychological drama set against the backdrop of very real music-making......
Read More
I am on Variety!
The dialogue in “Tár,” Todd Field’s movie about a high-profile classical-music conductor, rings true at every turn......
Read More
The New Operatic
"'The War on Music' is a stellar work of great scholarship and polemical worth......
Read More
Tár
I had the pleasure of being a consultant for the film Tár, about the fictional......
Read More
Copyright  ©2008–2022 JOHN MAUCERI. All rights reserved.
Designed by T. Tiberio and J. Ross
chevron-down
linkedin facebook pinterest youtube rss twitter instagram facebook-blank rss-blank linkedin-blank pinterest youtube twitter instagram