Slave opera opens on Detroit’s stage

Margaret Garner will come alive Saturday on the stage of the Detroit Opera House, a century and a half after the escaped slave tried to kill her children rather than see them live in bondage.

The highly anticipated production is the first foray into the world of opera for Grammy-winning composer Richard Danielpour, who created the music, and Nobel Prize-winning novelist Toni Morrison, who wrote the libretto and whose 1987 novel “Beloved” was inspired by the Garner story.

“The whole idea of being an expert in my area and a novice in another and working with someone who is an expert in his or her area, that’s very exciting to me,” said Morrison, a music lover whose original passions are jazz and blues. “I don’t have a lot of occasion to do collaborative, creative work with people who I respect and mixing in a genre about which I know nothing or very little.”

Danielpour said the subject appealed to him on a personal level. His parents, who are Persian Jews, were born in Iran, now largely an Islamic country.

“I’ve identified with the subject insomuch as my family history has been one of a certain kind of exile,” said Danielpour, who was born in the U.S.

Famed mezzo-soprano Denyce Graves is in the title role; rising star Angela M. Brown has the role of Cilla, Garner’s mother-in-law. The stage direction is by Kenny Leon, who recently directed “A Raisin in the Sun” on Broadway.

The story of Garner’s 1856 flight from Kentucky to the free state of Ohio sent shock waves through pre-Civil War America. When slave-hunters tracked down Garner, her husband and children, she killed her daughter as part of a thwarted attempt to avert a return to slavery.

The trial resulted in a legal debate about whether she should be charged with murder or property destruction. She ultimately was found guilty of the latter and returned to slavery.

It was a story Danielpour and Morrison said they had to tell.

“This was not just another gig. This was not just something we thought could be a great show,” Danielpour said. “We started feeling like this was something we needed to do. Composers like certain works because they want to and other works because they have to.”

The project was born during a lunch meeting in New York City in the summer of 1996. Danielpour and Morrison worked together previously on a song cycle and had wanted to pair up again. When each had an idea for a project, they decided to get together for lunch. And each had the same idea: creating an opera around the Garner tale.

While they talked, Danielpour said Morrison wrote the name over and over in a cursive script on the paper tablecloth at the restaurant.

“Margaret Garner.” “Margaret Garner.” “Margaret Garner.”

By 1998, they had created an outline, and a year later they were talking about the project with David DiChiera, the founder and general director of the Michigan Opera Theatre.

DiChiera helped develop the project, then invited opera companies in Philadelphia and Cincinnati to co-commission it at an overall cost of $6 million. After its premiere Saturday, the opera is scheduled to run through May 22. Cincinnati Opera will present “Margaret Garner” in July, and Opera Company of Philadelphia will put on it on next year.

The project suffered a hiccup a month ago when opera legend Jessye Norman -- who was set to portray Cilla -- decided to drop out of the Detroit performances.

The production team quickly replaced Norman with Brown, who already was set to play Cilla in Cincinnati and Philadelphia. She created a sensation last year in Verdi’s “Aida” at the Metropolitan Opera.

Although Norman is not exactly replaceable, most of those involved seem pleased to have Brown on board.

“I thought it would have been a catastrophe, but much to my surprise, there is a world of black opera women singers out there,” Morrison said. “Getting Angela Brown is a coup. I had heard her before, and she’s a marvel. It could have been a crash-and-burn if we didn’t have these other resources.”

“Margaret Garner” is the first opera to receive its world premiere at the Detroit Opera House since it opened in 1996.

DiChiera says Detroit, with its majority black population and history of confronting racially charged issues, is the perfect place to debut such a work.

“My idea of creating the first world premiere for the Opera House was to have an opera that reflected the African American experience,” he said. “That was my first goal. I felt that this was a wonderful way to pay tribute and to build bridges into the African American community.”