Opera Noire of New York
Encyclopedia
Opera Noire of New York is a performing arts company, as well as a resource and network for African-American artists. ONNY is an organization which has performed in multiple venues in the New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...

 metropolitan area. Opera Noire was founded by leading New York City Opera
New York City Opera
The New York City Opera is an American opera company located in New York City.The company, called "the people's opera" by New York Mayor Fiorello La Guardia, was founded in 1943 with the aim of making opera financially accessible to a wide audience, producing an innovative choice of repertory, and...

 tenor Robert Mack, baritone Kenneth Overton and tenor Barron Coleman. The group consists of all African American
African American
African Americans are citizens or residents of the United States who have at least partial ancestry from any of the native populations of Sub-Saharan Africa and are the direct descendants of enslaved Africans within the boundaries of the present United States...

 opera
Opera
Opera is an art form in which singers and musicians perform a dramatic work combining text and musical score, usually in a theatrical setting. Opera incorporates many of the elements of spoken theatre, such as acting, scenery, and costumes and sometimes includes dance...

 singers.

ONNY has partnered with the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture and New York City Opera to present rarely performed live excerpts from the operas Treemonisha
Treemonisha
Treemonisha is an opera composed by the famed African-American ragtime composer Scott Joplin. Though it encompasses a wide range of musical styles other than ragtime, and Joplin did not refer to it as such, it is sometimes incorrectly referred to as a "ragtime opera"...

, Ouanga, Four Saints in Three Acts, Till Victory is Won, Troubled in Mind, and I Was Looking at the Ceiling and Then I Saw the Sky by composers John Adams, Edward Boatner
Edward Boatner
Edward Boatner was an African American composer who wrote many popular concert arrangements of Negro spirituals.-Biography:...

, Mark Fax
Mark Fax
Mark Oakland Fax was a composer and a professor of music.-Child prodigy:Born on June 15, 1911, in Baltimore, Maryland, Fax was a child prodigy. By age fourteen, Fax was employed as a theater organist playing scores to silent films in Baltimore's Regent Theater on Saturdays, and gospel music at an...

, Scott Joplin
Scott Joplin
Scott Joplin was an American composer and pianist. Joplin achieved fame for his ragtime compositions, and was later dubbed "The King of Ragtime". During his brief career, Joplin wrote 44 original ragtime pieces, one ragtime ballet, and two operas...

, Virgil Thomson
Virgil Thomson
Virgil Thomson was an American composer and critic. He was instrumental in the development of the "American Sound" in classical music...

, and Clarence Cameron White
Clarence Cameron White
Clarence Cameron White was an African American neoromantic composer and concert violinist. Dramatic works by the composer were his best-known, such as the incidental music for the play Tambour and the opera Ouanga. During the first decades of the twentieth century, White was considered the...

. This program was presented in honor of the Schomburg Center's 85th Anniversary and Howard Dodson's 25th Anniversary as its director, and dedicated to the memory of the distinguished author and musician Raoul Abdul (1929–2010). It was the first in a series that also includes A Tribute to Robert McFerrin
Robert McFerrin
Robert McFerrin Sr. was the first African-American male to sing at the Metropolitan Opera in New York City...

and The Life and Times of Malcolm X
Malcolm X
Malcolm X , born Malcolm Little and also known as El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz , was an African American Muslim minister and human rights activist. To his admirers he was a courageous advocate for the rights of African Americans, a man who indicted white America in the harshest terms for its...

.
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