The murder of 14-year-old Emmett Till will be the subject of a new opera set to debut this spring. Many people are upset about the production, asking “how could the story authentically be told through a white woman’s eyes?”
According to Playbill, producers of “Emmett Till, A New American Opera,” are set to have the show’s world premiere at the Gerald W. Lynch Theatre at New York’s John Jay College on March 23 and host an encore performance on March 24.
Despite Opera Noire International and The Harlem Chamber Players, two reputable art institutions in New York, being the producing partners and backing the show, many of pushing back because the principal creative behind the show is playwright and librettist Clare Coss, who wrote the award-winning 2013 play “Emmett, Down in My Heart.”
Upon learning about the production, Tonii Alexis tweeted, “This is the absolute worst. Broadway is so fucking backwards and THIS is why my love for theatre has dried tf up.”
One Twitter user, @OwlsAsylum wrote, “I still cringe hearing Kanye use Emmett Till’s name in through that wire. I wrote a whole piece about Wayne using his name.”
Before finishing, “This is probably even more sacrilege than those two. “A New American Opera”…”American” is a catch all phrase that steals, consumes, and shyts out coins.”
“Stop using Black suffering to make feel good content for white people,” comedian @majorphilebrity requested.
Haley Besser’s sentiment was clear and representative of many on the social media platform, saying, “Absolutely not. We don’t need this from the POV of a white person.”
The opera will center on Roanne Taylor, a white woman who “is against Jim Crow laws, segregation and the racial inequality that she sees around her but remains silent.” Although a fictional character, Taylor does engage with actual players associated with the tragic Till killing, such as his mother Mamie Till and the white woman that alleged that he whistled at her, Carolyn Bryant.
Bryant’s accusations ultimately cost the Chicago teenager his life. Her husband and his associates lynched Till, beating him and tossing him into the Tallahatchie River. When his body was discovered, it was so disfigured he was beyond recognition — adding to the white men’s defense that the body might not have been the child’s but a ploy but civil rights leaders to cause race conflict.
The producers have sought out a strong cast and creative team.
Starring in the opera are mezzo-soprano Lucia Bradford (Mamie Till); tenor Robert Mack (Emmett Till); mezzo-soprano Abigail Wright (Roanne Taylor); soprano Amanda Rose Austin (Carolyn Bryant); baritone Justin Ryan (Roy Bryant); contralto Karmesha Peake (Aunt Lizzy); and baritone Markell Reed (Maurice Wright).
The production will be conducted by 2021 Pulitzer Prize winner Tania León, the chorus master will be Malcolm Merriweather and Kyle Walker was hired as the rehearsal pianist.
Marcia Pendelton, the Founder and CEO of Walk Tall Girl Production, a full-service theater marketing, and group sales agency, told the Atlanta Black Star that she believes that stories told about Black people on stages where the audience is predominantly white, “must be authentic” and “historically accurate.”
“Adding a character that was not there to such a powerful illustration of Black pain to lift the complexity of whiteness, shifts the attention from Mama Till’s pain and muddies the historical complexity of the Emmett Till story,” she concluded.
Emmett Till has been in the news lately. NBC News reports, on March 7, Congress gave the final approval to the Emmett Till Anti-Lynching Act, legislation that would make lynching a federal hate crime. Now, the bill will be sent to President Joe Biden to sign into law.
According to college professor and author Timothy B. Tyson, the white woman, Carolyn Bryant Donham, told him that she lied almost 70 years ago about the teen ever making sexual advances toward her or whistling at her. He recounted their conversation in his book, “The Blood of Emmett Till.”
However, in December of 2021, she said to federal agents that Tyson was not telling the truth.
