Making of An Opera
In 1910 Zitkala-Ša began collaborating with composer William F. Hanson, who taught at Brigham Young University. She wrote the libretto and songs. She played Sioux melodies on the violin and Hanson transcribed them into Western notes. On February 1913, the premiere performance of The Sun Dance Opera was presented at Orpheus Hall in Vernal, Utah. The production featured members of the Ute Nation living on the nearby Uintah and Ouray Indian Reservation. It was significant in its shift from Native American oral musical tradition to a written one. Its debut was met with critical acclaim and few works of Native American opera have dealt with Native American themes so exclusively since.
In 1938 the New York Light Opera Guild premiered The Sun Dance Opera at the Broadway Theatre. Publicity mentioned only William F. Hanson as composer.
Read more about this topic: Zitkala-Sa
Famous quotes containing the words making of, making and/or opera:
“The gay world that flourished in the half-century between 1890 and the beginning of the Second World War, a highly visible, remarkably complex, and continually changing gay male world, took shape in New York City.... It is not supposed to have existed.”
—George Chauncey, U.S. educator, author. Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture, and the Making of the Gay Male World, 1890-1940, p. 1, Basic Books (1994)
“Anybody can observe the Sabbath, but making it holy surely takes the rest of the week.”
—Alice Walker (b. 1944)
“A pretty air in an opera is prettier there than it could be anywhere else, I suppose, just as an honest man in politics shines more than he would elsewhere.”
—Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)