The term Opera (or in some countries referred to as "The Opera") is traditionally seen as part of the Western classical music tradition. It therefore largely falls outside the ambit of this encyclopaedia.

However, some works and productions actually qualify as theatrical forms for various reasons, or are part of an integrated set of events, and are therefore taken up here (see below).

For the use of the term to refer to a performance venue (e.g. "The Opera" or the "Opera House"), see the entry on Opera House.

Opera as performance form

Opera originated in Italy at the end of the 16th century (with Jacopo Peri's mostly lost work Dafne, produced in Florence in 1598) and soon spread through the rest of Europe. The form was initially viewed as an entirely sung piece, in contrast to a play with songs, but opera gradually began to include numerous other genres, often containing spoken dialogue - such as Operetta[1], Musical theatre[2], Singspiel[3], Opéra comique[4], etc.

Other features of the 19th century is the so called extravaganzas or burlesque versions of operas, performed by dramatic companies and the so-called Savoy operas of the late 19th and early 20yth centuries.

In the first half of the 20th century, there was also the rise of a kind of radicalized operatic production, intended as a form of protest and political comment (theoretically informed by the ideas and practice of people like Meyerhold and Brecht for example).

Arising from this, a feature of the late 20th and 21st centuries became the many experiments that were undertaken with the form, including modern styles of music, and in some cases the theatricalization of opera, drawing it closer to popular musicals (e.g. the so-called Jazz opera (e.g. Gershwin's Blue Monday and the iconic Porgy and Bess), the rise of the notion of a Rock opera (usually referring to a recorded performance, and when staged, more often termed a Rock musical). There are also the large-scale operatic style musicals, such as Les Miserables and The Phantom of the Opera.

For more on Opera as form, see for example Wikipedia[5]

Opera in South Africa - a brief overview

Besides its history as a musical form in South Africa, opera has also been intertwined with live theatre since the early years. Many of the theatrical companies visiting South Africa for example tended to have repertoires that included both dramatic and operatic work - especially in the 19th century. Similarly, many performers worked in a range of forms, including opera, musicals, cabaret, and so on, and therefore these performances will be reflected here.

A key event was the first "African Jazz Opera", King Kong (1959). Later in the 20th century, as the theatre became more radicalized, the work of theatre director/creators, such as William Kentridge; Mark Dornford-May, Brett Bailey and the Third World Bunfight [6] and so on, became influential, with the "African" style of operatic performance emerging more powerfully. In this encyclopaedia such work is considered as theatrical events, and therefore represented in the encyclopaedia.

To help readers in interpreting some of these events, we provide a brief overview of the history of Opera in South Africa here. It is a history that may be loosely divided into four periods:

1. The period of colonisation before the founding of the Union of South Africa in 1910,

2. The period from Union till the coming of the South African Republic in 1961,

3. The 30 years from the establishment of the four Performing Arts Councils by Act of Parliament in 1963 up until the end of the Apartheid era in 1993

4. The period of the new South African Republic, after 1994.

Below follow a few highlights from each of these periods, notable events which in a sense had an impact on theatre in general.

Before 1910

The early 19th Century

Very little documentation of the activities of this period has survived until the present day with the exception of occasional references to performances in journals and letters of the period. No regular performances of operas were held in the first half of the nineteenth century. Performances were given either by musicians from the English garrison or travelling opera companies.

The first recorded opera performance in South Africa took place on 10 May 1802 when musicians stationed in the Cape during the English occupation (billed as the Garrison Players) staged the ballad opera The Devil to Pay. The performance was repeated on 28 June 1802. The group performed another ballad opera, The Poor Soldier on 6 September 1802.

The first artists to visit the Cape around 1803 to 1806 were French opera companies who were on their way to Mauritius, often performing under the most primitive conditions in makeshift venues, largely for the entertainment of the officers and their wives. Mostly opéras-comiques were performed in the original French, as had been the fashion then, and these French companies had introduced new French operas to Cape audiences. After the occupation of Mauritius and the Cape by Britain in 1806, visits by French groups became less frequent. The last French company to visit the Cape was in 1833.

The earliest operas performed in Cape Town included works by Francois Joseph Gossec (Toinon et Toinette, 1803), André Grétry (Le Tableau Parlant, 1803), Dibdin (The Padlock, 1808), French composer Etienne-Nicolas Méhul (Une Folie, 1809) and Storace (No Song, No Supper, 1815), with the first important work being Weber's Der Freischütz in 1831. From the mid-nineteenth century, an increasing number of travelling companies from England performed in the Cape, mostly performing comic operas and theatre works in English and French by contemporary composers of the time.

The late 19th century

By the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, several professional touring companies brought their productions from Europe to South Africa, visiting cities and towns across South Africa, often traveling from the Cape or Port Elizabeth and making their way north to the interior of the country. These companies stayed for as long as they could attract audiences, and then moved on to the next town or city.

The first of these groups was the Miranda-Harper Company, who toured the country from 1868 onwards and produced comic and serious opera. In 1870, this group also performed the first serious opera to be presented in full in Durban when they performed Giuseppe Verdi’s Il trovatore in the newly constructed Trafalgar Hall.

Other visiting companies included:

Opera in Natal

In 1886, J. Ferguson Brown founded the Durban Amateur Operatic Society. Their first production was Gilbert and Sullivan’s The Mikado, staged in the Theatre Royal.

Luscombe Searelle

Certainly there was little or no formal strucure to opera until the arrival in Cape Town in 1887 of Luscombe Searelle and his Australian Opera Company. The company had a record season a 162 consecutive performances over a period of six months. After touring the Eastern Cape, Kimberley, Durban and Pietermaritzburg, Searelle and his company arrived in Johannesburg and erected their own theatre, the "Theatre Royal" at the corner of Eloff and Commissioner Streets. A series of successful seasons followed in quick succession and the new taste for opera which Searelle brought led to the formation of a number of revival opera companies. His final South African season was held in Durban in 1899 after which, financially embarrassed as a result of competition and failed productions he returned to England. Yet, his pioneering spirit had firmly established opera in South Affica.

The Opera House in Cape Town

The Opera House opened in Cape Town in 1893. Productions staged at the venue were mainly operettas by Gilbert and Sullivan and French composers such as Edmond Audran and Robert Planquette. Only occasionally was serious opera presented, such as Wagner’s Tannhäuser in 1899.

1910-1961

Early years of the Union of South Africa

In 1912 and 1913, the Quinlan Opera Company from the United Kingdom toured in South Africa. Led by a dynamic and idealistic Irishman, Thomas Quinlan, the company consisted of about 160 artists, including 45 instrumentalists and three conductors, producing six grand operas in 1912, namely Giacomo Puccini’s Madama Butterfly, Giuseppe Verdi’s Aida, Charles Gounod’s Faust, Richard Wagner’s Lohengrin and Tannhäuser, and George Bizet’s Carmen. The 1913 productions coincided with the Wagner Centenary, and Quinlan produced a Wagner Festival in both Cape Town and Johannesburg where they produced Die Walküre, Tristan und Isolde, Lohengrin, Tannhäuser and Die Meistersinger von Nurnberg.

However, most travelling companies stopped coming to the Cape in the early twentieth century. The John Ridding Opera Company and the Gonzalez Italian Opera Company were two of the last to visit South Africa.

Grand opera became increasingly popular in the 1930s, mainly through the intercession of the African Consolidated Theatres, Ltd., and the African Broadcasting Company or SABC, as it became known after August 1936.

The South African College of Music (SACM)

The South African College of Music (SACM) at the University of Cape Town began staging operas in 1929 (Rossini’s Il barbiere di Siviglia), and from the 1930s staged at least one opera per year. The SACM was the first to introduce formal singing and opera studies and was a very valuable asset that provided local singers opportunities to tour in South Africa in order to perform opera. Singers who studied at the college were Cecilia Wessels, Emma Renzi and Desiree Talbot.

Many of the operas in the SACM’s repertoire were ensemble works and lesser-known operas but they were suited for opera students and small casts, such as Mozart’s Der Schauspieldirektor and Bastien und Bastienne, Pergolesi’s La serva padrona, Puccini’s Suor Angelica, Menotti’s Amahl and the Night Visitors, Bartók’s Bluebeard’s Castle, and Arne’s The Cooper.

Opera and operetta in Durban, Natal

Several opera societies were established in Natal during this period. These included the Durban Opera Society (formerly the Durban Amateur Operatic Society), the Durban Amateur Grand Opera Society, the Municipal Choral and Light Opera Society, and the Durban Opera and Drama Society. Gilbert and Sullivan operettas were particularly popular choices for these societies. After 1952, the newly opened Alhambra Theatre became the venue for operetta production by local groups. The Durban Opera Company was launched in 1959.

John Connell and Alessandro Giuseppe Rota

A landmark in South African operatic history occurred in 1932 when John Connell, the Johannesburg City organist and director of music, conducted a performance of Tannhäuser. The arrival of the Carl Rosa Opera Company in Johannesburg in 1937 for a season at the Empire Theatre gave convincing proof of the substantial public following for opera in the city and led to Connell signing a contract with the SABC to direct opera on regular basis for broadcast. Connell had launched his Music Fortnight performances in 1926 which were subsidised by the Johannesburg municipality, and from this, a Johannesburg opera season was to grow.

In 1938, Connell's Johannesburg Music Festival began. The first festival included five orchestral programmes and a fortnight’s season of opera, which included Gounod’s Faust, Nicolai’s The Merry Wives of Windsor, and Mozart’s Don Giovanni. By 1948, ten operas and two ballets were performed. From 1945 Connell had begun to travel to Europe and was able to persuade famous conductors to come to South Africa, such as Malcolm Sargent and Thomas Beecham.

In 1939, Alessandro Giuseppe Rota, an Italian tenor, founded the Cape Town Opera Company. In collaboration with the SACM at UCT, Rota managed to produce and perform opera in various towns, such as Kimberley, Graaff-Reinet, Cradock and Grahamstown. Together with Connell, Rota went on to form a National Opera Company which toured the country when the Johannesburg season had been concluded. They were also the inspiration for the founding of the first National Opera Association of South Africa which was formed in Johannesburg in 1955.

Operas performed in Afrikaans

The first operas to be performed in Afrikaans were Mascagni’s Cavalleria Rusticana, translated by Con de Villiers and performed in Stellenbosch in 1940; Bizet’s Carmen as translated by Gideon Roos in 1946; and Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte, again translated by Roos, in 1948.

The EOAN Group in the Cape

A significant role-player in presenting opera in the Cape was the EOAN Group, South Africa's most important cultural group for the Cape Coloured community, established in 1933 by Helen Southern-Holt. In 1943, the EOAN Group's music section increased in importance when Joseph Manca took charge of the groups small choir. It was Manca who promoted the idea of an arts festival, the first of which took place in 1956, and it was at this festival that La Traviata was sung in Italian. This was the first time in South Africa’s music history that an exclusively coloured cast performed in an opera. After the success of its first arts festival in 1956, the EOAN Group held a further ten opera seasons over the next twenty years, focusing on operas by Verdi, Puccini, Rossini, Mascagni, Leoncavallo and Donizetti.

The first South African opera

In the mid 1950s, Erik Chisholm instigated the composition of In the Drought (by John Joubert, 1955). The piece was first performed in Johannesburg in 1956. It was subsequently translated by Anton Hartman into Afrikaans and performed as In die Droogte and staged by the South African Opera Federation in Johannesburg in 1958.

Opera in the Transvaal

There were several opera organisations in the Transvaal at this time. They included the National Opera Association of South Africa and the Opera Society of South Africa (these later merged as the South African Opera Federation) and the Pretoria Opera Group.

The Opera Organisation of South Africa (Opera–organisasie van Suid-Afrika) (OPEROSA) was founded by the Afrikaanse Kultuurraad of Pretoria in 1957. Contrary to the other opera companies, this organisation did not endeavour to produce opera but rather to negotiate funding from private sponsors, provincial and municipal government. OPEROSA would encourage opera associations from Johannesburg, Durban and Cape Town to join forces by establishing a National Opera Company. Its stated aim was to grow into a national organisation and to lobby for funding from the state.

The memorandum of 1960

After very successful performances sponsored by the government, the Johannesburg City municipality and Transvaal administration at the 1959–1960 Union Festival, the South African Opera Federation drafted a memorandum in 1960 and presented it to the government. In 1962 parliament accepted the proposal and funding was made available for four performing arts councils in South Africa. With secure funding from the government, opera in South Africa would be able to offer full-time positions to professional local artists in future.

1962-1993

The Arts Councils

The National Party government announced the establishment of the provincial arts councils on 12 June 1962, when the dissolution of the National Theatre Organisation was announced in Parliament. From 1963 till the beginning of the 1990s the bulk of the operas in South Africa were produced by the four state funded Performing Arts Councils (PACs):

CAPAB (in Afrikaans KRUIK)
NAPAC (in Afrikaans NARUK)
PACT (in Afrikaans TRUK)
PACOFS (in Afrikaans SUKOVS)

There was also an arts council in the then South West Africa, now Namibia (SWAPAC).

Each of the provincial arts councils was given an annual budget by the central government and, within this budget each council had to operate departments which were responsible for the productions of drama, opera and ballet. The provincial performing arts councils were conceived solely for the benefit of white performers and white audiences.

For further information on the history, staff and productions of each of the four Performing Arts Councils, see:

The first Afrikaans opera

Conductor Anton Hartman was instrumental in advancing the work of South African composers through the Opera Society of South Africa, especially the presentation of opera in Afrikaans. The first full-length Afrikaans opera is said to be Klutaimnestra by Cromwell Everson (1925–1991), staged in 1967. The opera celebrates Afrikaner identity, culture and language.

After 1994

The post-Apartheid milieu has seen a remarkable amount of investment in and development of Opera for the new South Africa. Companies began actively to expand audiences, re-invent repertoires and grow a diverse new generation of performers.

The former state-funded Performing Arts Councils were disbanded or transformed from 1994. Companies such as the Cape Town Opera (previously CAPAB Opera), Roodepoort City Opera, Opera Africa, Free State Opera (previously PACOFS Opera), the Natal Playhouse (previously NAPAC) and the State Theatre Company (previously PACT Opera) developed their own vision and mission in order to sustain the opera tradition within their specific regions. These companies relied very little, if at all, on state funding and depended mainly on private and public funding by larger companies.

Venues, such as at Spier, provided new platforms for showcasing this development and established and emerging writers steadily turned their hands to making authentic South African/African opera.

Developing new voices

There was a concerted effort by CAPAB Opera (and later Cape Town Opera) to develop young black singers and to create opportunities for them within their Choral Training Programme and CAPAB Opera Chorus, leading to an increase in the number of black performers in the company and also to a reframing of CAPAB Opera's repertoire choices. In 1999, Mimi Coertse and Neels Hansen founded the Black Tie Ensemble in Pretoria as a means to help preserve the traditions of opera performance in South Africa and to create a pathway for gifted, aspiring young singers to become opera performers. This evolved into what was later known as Gauteng Opera.

Developing new works

New South African operas were commissioned by CAPAB Opera and later Cape Town Opera. Works included Enoch, Prophet of God (1995), Sacred Bones (1997) and Buchuland (1998), all by composer Roelof Temmingh and librettist Michael Williams. Cape Town Opera also commissioned and produced showcases of new, short works at events such as Five:20 Operas Made in SA (2010), Two:30 (2013) and Four:30 – Operas Made in South Africa (2015).

South Africanisation/Africanisation of the classics

Classic European operas have provided rich source material for the development of successful South Africanised works that reflect the languages, musical sounds and settings of the South African landscape. Such works have included:

Puccini’s La bohème reworked as La bohème noir (1997)
Monteverdi's Il Ritorno d’Ulisse (adapted by William Kentridge with the Handspring Puppet Company, 1998)
Bizet's Carmen (reworked as U-Carmen, 2001)
Mozart's The Magic Flute (as The Magic Flute - Impempe Yomlingo by Mark Dornford-May and produced by Isango Portobello, 2007)
Verdi's Macbeth (adapted by Brett Bailey and Fabrizio Cassol, and produced by Third World Bunfight, 2014)
Lehár's Die Lustige Witwe (as The Merry Widow of Malagawi, 2015).

Several of these works have toured internationally and with great success.

Carmen and La bohème were also both filmed as U-Carmen eKhayelitsha (2005) and Breathe – Umphefumlo (2015).

Opera as biography

Opera in the 21st century in South Africa has become a post-Apartheid vehicle for the retelling of the biographies of key historic and Apartheid-era figures, such as:

Nelson Mandela (Mandela Trilogy, 2010)
his former wife, Winnie Madikizela-Mandela (Winnie, the Opera, 2011)
anti-Apartheid and assassinated activist Chris Hani (Hani, 2010)
the first Zulu opera, Princess Magogo kaDinuzulu (2002), by composer Mzilikazi Khumalo, commissioned by Opera Africa and based on the life of the Zulu princess, composer and imbongi Magogo kaDinuzulu
and the late-18th century Khoi-khoi woman, Sara Baartman, who was 'displayed' across Europe as the "Hottentot Venus" (Sara Baartman, 2022).

Sources

"Opera" in Wikipedia at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opera#Other_trends.

https://thirdworldbunfight.co.za/

Wayne Muller. 2019. "How South Africans forged a path to making opera truly African", The Conversation, January 29, 201[7]

Wayne Muller. 2018. A reception history of opera in Cape Town: Tracing the development of a distinctly South African operatic aesthetic (1985–2015). Unpublished PhD thesis.

Hermien Dommisse, 2001

History of Cape Town Opera[8]

Havergal Brian. "John Connell’s Johannesburg Festival" from "On the other hand". Musical opinion, June 1938, p. 777.

Antoinette Johanna Olivier. 2014. 'Exploring contributions to opera by The Black Tie Ensemble: a historical case study'. Mini-dissertation submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree Master‟s in Music at the Potchefstroom Campus of the North-West University.

Hilde Roos. 2012. 'Indigenisation and history: how opera in South Africa became South African opera'. Acta Academica Supplementum. 2012(1).

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