New books chart SA contribution to opera

Two new books – one charting the performance history of opera in Cape Town and the other on the life of the late South African repetiteur Gordon Jephtas – will be launched on Tuesday, 21 May 2024 at the Baxter Concert Hall.

The launch is presented by Opera UCT and will include performances by up-and-coming opera singers currently training at the University of Cape Town (UCT).

In Opera in Cape Town – The Critic’s Voice, Dr Wayne Muller writes about how opera critics have shaped audiences’ ideas of especially the “Africanisation” of opera during the post-apartheid era.

“Sorry. I am what I am.” – The life and letters of the South African pianist and opera coach Gordon Jephtas (1943–92) – edited by scholars Dr Hilde Roos, Féroll-Jon Davids and Dr Chris Walton – is a collection of letters written by Jephtas to local soprano May Abrahamse that reveal striking stories about his life as an international repetiteur.

As a teenager, Jephtas was a member of the Eoan Group, a Cape Town-based welfare and cultural organisation started in 1933 for coloured people in District Six. He studied at the South African College of Music at UCT and left South Africa in the 1960s for further training in Europe.

Eventually, Jephtas had a prolific career as repetiteur and coached star singers like Luciano Pavarotti, Renata Tebaldi, Franco Corelli and Montserrat Caballé.

At the book launch, Roos and Davids will discuss more about Jephtas’s life, and the audience will be able to hear unique recordings of him during coaching sessions. Both Roos and Davids have done research on Jephtas’s life and work in Europe and the USA, where he died in 1992 in New York.

“We had 144 items – which included letters, postcards and telegrams – that could be included in the book. It is all about Gordon’s life; he was often self-critical and had a need to be acknowledged within the apartheid context. But at that time, it was impossible for a coloured man to have a career in opera in his own country,” says Roos and Davids.

Muller’s book charts a reception history of opera in Cape Town from the specific perspective of the opera critics who reviewed opera performances in the city since the 1980s.

“These views of critics cast an interesting light on the aesthetic changes that happened in opera. Since 1994, opera had been made relevant to local audiences by transporting the settings of opera from Europe to South Africa. So, we’ve seen classical operas like Puccini’s La Bohème – and many others – being set in Soweto or District Six or in a different context with adaptations,” says Muller.

The book traces how indigenous music, languages and cultural practices became part of the performance practice of the standard repertoire. Coupled with that, more than 20 new operas by South African composers were composed since 1995, which all tell unique South African stories.

Roos, Davids and Muller are affiliated with the Africa Open Institute for Music, Research and Innovation at Stellenbosch University.

At the book launch, the authors will be interviewed by popular Cape Talk radio presenter Africa Melane, while the Director of Opera UCT, Jeremy Silver, will accompany young singers who will perform arias and ensembles from operas that have been popular with audiences in Cape Town as well as those who were significant in Jephtas’s career.

• The book launch is on Tuesday, 21 May 2024 at 19:00 in the Baxter Concert Hall in Rondebosch, Cape Town. Tickets are available at Webtickets (search “Opera for the Books”).