The Passion and Pageantry of Shirley Graham's Opera Tom-Tom. Issue 2 (1st October 2016)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Aptheker, Bettina
• Is Part Of: Souls. Volume 18:Issue 2/42016)
• Page Start: 263
• Page End: 270
• Publication Date: 2016-10-01
• Subjects: opera composer -- race woman -- struggle for respectability; African Americans -- Periodicals; African Americans -- Social conditions -- Periodicals; African Americans -- History -- Periodicals; United States -- Race relations -- Periodicals; 305.896
• DOI: 10.1080/10999949.2016.1230812
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1099-9949

Abstract

Abstract : Shirley Graham, prior to her 1951 marriage to W.E.B. Du Bois, had an extended career as a composer, playwright, and biographer. From the late 1920s she struggled as a single parent with two young boys, and did her best to disassemble the fact of her divorce to ensure her respectability. At the highlight of her career her opera Tom-Tom premiered at the Cleveland Opera Festival in the Summer of 1932. Ten thousand people attended the opening night performance. The opera was a sensation and critically acclaimed. The article offers a critical reading of the opera, and a sympathetic accounting of her struggle for autonomy, respectability, and a radical political and intellectual legacy.