Voodoo (opera)

Voodoo is an opera in three acts with music and libretto by Harry Lawrence Freeman. A product of the Harlem Renaissance, it was first performed with piano accompaniment as a radio broadcast on May 20, 1928. The first staged performance with orchestra took place on September 10, 1928 at the Palm Garden (a temporary name for the 52nd Street Theatre) in New York City.

Freeman was a talented African American musician, becoming assistant church organist at age 10. A seminal moment in his life was seeing Richard Wagner's opera Tannhäuser. In 1891, at age 18, he completed his first opera. He continued to compose numerous operas during much of his life.

In several articles concerning Voodoo, the New York Amsterdam News varied its reportage of the time Freeman had spent on composing the opera. Initially, the paper said "Although Professor Freeman has been prepared for years for the opportunity to present the negro in opera he has had to bide his time." After the opera had closed, the paper said that Freeman had been working on the opera for two years. The paper corrected itself later when it reported that he had completed the opera in 1914. (The finding aid for Freeman's papers at Columbia University indicates a vocal score dated 1912.)

Voodoo is set in Louisiana during the Reconstruction Era. Cleota, a house servant, is in love with Mando, a plantation overseer on the plantation where they live. The voodoo queen, Lolo, is jealous and, seeing Cleota as a rival, tries to put her out of the way. A voodoo ceremony takes place during which Lolo and her associate Fojo distribute amulets and charms to participants, then retreat to a glen to invoke the snake-god. Cleota is about to be put to death but is rescued by Mando and Chloe (Lolo's mother). Another attempt by Lolo to subdue Cleota results in the queen being shot.

The New York Herald Tribune reported that the opera was to illustrate "typical Negro life in the days of slavery, while the music includes spirituals, chants, arias, tangoes and other dances, among these a ritualistic voodoo ceremony."

The opera was first presented as a radio broadcast with piano accompaniment (played by Freeman) on May 20, 1928 over station WGBS. The cast included Doris Trotman, soprano; Carlotta Freeman, soprano; Ray Yates, tenor; Otto Bohanan, baritone.

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