Of The Sea and other Black operas are changing the face of classical music

Kanika Ambrose is no stranger to attention; as a playwright and librettist, Ambrose has already debuted original work at stages in Canada and the United States, and as a screenwriter she is enrolled in the Canadian Film Centre's Bell Media Prime Time TV Program.

So it might be surprising to note how excited she is on a Wednesday evening for a show already on its second night. But for Ambrose, this performance has special significance.

"I wanted Black folks to see themselves in opera and have space to enjoy opera," she said. "And I hope that's what happens tonight."

At that moment she was at Toronto's St. Lawrence Centre for the Arts for a special showing of Of The Sea, an original opera she conceived of and wrote. And as the story she developed focuses on enslaved Africans who fell or were tossed from ships during the Middle Passage, organizers set up a performance specifically for a majority Black audience. 

While everyone was welcome, the goal was to invite Black theatre-goers into a space they had not typically been welcomed into, catered to or had their stories told onstage. 

"It's an audience we don't typically see in theatre," Ambrose said, explaining why they organized their Black Celebration Night. "We're missing the friends, the fans, the people who want to see those people on stage, and also the nuance of different lived experiences that can bring so much to an art form."

That idea was the driving force behind Of The Sea, which also boasts an all-Black cast and creative team aside from composer Ian Cusson, who is Métis. But it comes alongside a wave of other productions that have begun to do the same: the Canadian Opera Company is soon debuting Aportia Chryptych — itself about Portia White, a legendary Nova Scotia opera contralto, and the first Black Canadian concert singer to achieve international fame. 

The COC is also developing Treemonisha, a retelling of ragtime composer Scott Joplin's opera — one of the only such productions written about slavery by someone who actually lived through the post-slavery period. It will also feature an all-Black cast and with the first all-Black orchestra in Canadian opera history.

South of the border, New York's Metropolitan Opera is mounting the opera Champion in April — a jazz-infused retelling of boxing giant Emile Griffith's complicated life. That opera, by Grammy winner Terence Blanchard, was scheduled in a lightning-fast (for the world of professional opera) decision based on the success of Blanchard's last production — itself the first work by a Black composer to play at the Met. 

From the outside, it all looks like a stunning change in the landscape of a rarefied musical domain that has appeared to be either indifferent to — or intentionally exclusionary to — a large part of the population. 

While much of American popular music has roots in Black community and culture, classical music — and specifically opera — has appeared less welcoming to their influence and participation.

According to a 2022 study by Opera America only one-fifth of opera administrators in Canada and the United States were Black, Indigenous or people of colour, while a new a new program by that same service organization recently promoted a program that pairs opera companies with historically Black colleges and universities to rectify "historic exclusionary practices against people of colour."

At the same time the underpinnings of Western music theory and the canon of classical music have prompted a number of studies and arguments over the seeming lack of input and acknowledgement of Black composers. 

In his paper Music Theory and the White Racial Frame, Hunter College music professor Philip Ewell found that over 98 per cent of the music written in the United States' seven most popular teaching textbooks was written by white composers — showcasing a lack of importance put on the contribution of Black writers.