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Kola
Moderator
Username: Kola
Post Number: 894
Registered: 02-2005
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, May 16, 2005 - 07:01 pm: | 
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I'm so proud of Toni Morrison being the TOP JUDGE at the Caanes Film Festival!!
And I'm glad to post this article about the new MUSICAL play that's based on her novel "BELOVED"....
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Toni Morrison adapts story of 'Beloved' for new tragic opera 'Margaret Garner'
By Lawrence B. Johnson / The Detroit News
It may center on a dreadful chapter of American history, but "Margaret Garner," which receives its world premiere Saturday at the Detroit Opera House, is not an opera merely about the awfulness of slavery, says librettist Toni Morrison.
It's just as much about the treasured institution of family and the desperate attempt by two fugitive slaves to keep theirs together -- in an environment that accorded them no personal rights, privacy or dignity whatsoever.
Nor is the opera an indictment of slave owners, says Morrison, who drew the story of "Margaret Garner" from her Pulitzer Prize-winning novel "Beloved."
"I never set out to identify one group as acceptable and another group as unacceptable. That would put me in the same place as all those who ever held slaves. When Gaines (Margaret's owner) is agonizing over whether to pardon her or hang her, he says 'the flaw is in the blueprints.' It's just the way things are in that society, that culture. Enslaved labor was the norm, and it wasn't limited to the South.
"Who knows, maybe 150 years down the road people will look back on capitalism and say it was a terrible thing, that it did terrible things to people. What's really important for someone trying to make art is to ask: How do people manage to keep their humanity under such awful conditions as slavery. Some fight against (the oppression) and die, some deny it, some accommodate it."
Margaret flees from enslavement in an effort to preserve her family and protect her children. Ultimately, she makes a more resonant choice. "Acting as a parent, a prerogative that was never hers as a slave, she does this thing that she believes is best for her children," Morrison says. "In death, she believes they will be in a secure place."
When Morrison wrote the story line and dialogue for "Margaret Garner," she had the unusual experience of revisiting "Beloved." But creating the opera libretto was no mere reframing of the novel, she says. It was an opportunity to refocus on the central character -- and to grapple with an altogether new artistic challenge.
"An opera is a very big deal," says Morrison, the 74-year-old author whose mantel of honors also bears the 1993 Nobel Prize for literature. "Margaret Garner," a collaboration with composer Richard Danielpour, is Morrison's first opera libretto. But it wasn't the first time she fashioned words in the service of music.
Morrison had written song lyrics for both Danielpour and Andre Previn, exercises that prepared her well for the grander task of transforming a storyline from "Beloved" into an opera, essentially a stage play that's carried primarily by the music, not the words.
The resulting drama -- about a Kentucky slave who escapes to Ohio with her children, only to be recaptured in a horrific turn of events -- evokes such historical weight and tragic sensibility that mezzo-soprano Denyce Graves, who sings the title role, says she has trouble separating herself from the character of Margaret Garner.
"I've never been affected by a character the way I have here," says Graves, hailed by many in the opera world as the most brilliant Carmen on the stage today. "So much about (Margaret Garner) connects with my own experience in so many ways and on so many levels. I am a mother. I completely understand the choice she makes. I think about her every day, all the time."
The stunning choice Margaret makes is instantaneous: As her pursuers close in, Margaret kills her children rather than see them returned to a life of slavery. The historical incident, in the late 1850s, became a cause celebre for abolitionists when Margaret Garner's owner wanted her to be tried not for murder but for destruction of property (her children, meaning his chattel).
"When I wrote 'Beloved' (1987), I was interested in the long-term consequences of Margaret's actions," says Morrison. "This time, the focus is on the trial. Which way would she be charged -- for murder or for stealing (herself and her children) and destroying property? The abolitionists of course clamored for the murder charge because that would establish the slaves' humanity."
The trick now was to recreate a part of that epic novel for an evening-length work of music-theater. The writer understood her role.
"When you're creating an opera libretto, you can't indulge the subtlety, the double-entendre, the layered meaning of either prose or poetry. The dialogue (for 'Margaret Garner') is written in African-American language. It's rich in metaphor and yet simple.
"Yet the lyrics must provoke the composer to find the hunger for music in them. When it happened that way, it was quite exciting. When it didn't, we got rid of it. Richard and I went through a great deal of give and take."
In the end, Morrison says, "Margaret Garner" is a story of redemption through love. "Margaret is redeemed as well as her children. Perhaps we are all redeemed in witnessing it."
Librettist Toni Morrison (right) and composer Richard Danielpour look on as the new opera comes to life in a rehearsal.
You can reach Lawrence B. Johnson at (313) 222-2394 or ljohnson@ detnews.com.
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Cynnique
Unregistered guest
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, May 16, 2005 - 10:22 pm: |
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Guess that's why Toni couldn't attend Oprah's big week-end extravaganza honoring black female legends including Tom Cruise and John Travolta and Stedman. heh-heh. To show their gratitude for being among those invited to this elite gathering, several guests were seriously touting Oprah for president. Is there no end to this woman's power. She should really start her own religion, then she could be Pope-rah. |
Yvettep
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Yvettep
Post Number: 307
Registered: 01-2005
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Tuesday, May 17, 2005 - 12:21 pm: |
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"Pope-rah"--LOL! |
Abm
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Abm
Post Number: 2778
Registered: 04-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Tuesday, May 17, 2005 - 01:26 pm: |
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Cynique,
Are Tom Cruise, John Travolta and Stedman Graham really considered "BLACK FEMALE legends"...or are you just being facetious? |
Kola
Moderator
Username: Kola
Post Number: 912
Registered: 02-2005
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Tuesday, May 17, 2005 - 01:44 pm: |
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The article above about "Margaret Garner".......has haunted me for days.
And I'm impressed that Toni Morrison wrote an entirely different story that was not covered in BELOVED, although it's based on the same woman.
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Abm
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Abm
Post Number: 2782
Registered: 04-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Tuesday, May 17, 2005 - 01:51 pm: |
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Kola,
Maybe Toni felt profoundly compelled to tell the truth about Garner to set right her prior plagarization of her in Beloved. |
Kola
Moderator
Username: Kola
Post Number: 914
Registered: 02-2005
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Tuesday, May 17, 2005 - 02:08 pm: |
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I don't see anything wrong with Garner's portrayal in BELOVED. I think it's an outstanding tribute to Garner and to ALL Black mothers---and to black women of that time and place----what Morrison did in BELOVED.
I can't think of another film that does so much justice to black women---other than "The Color Purple" and Quentin Tarantino's "Jackie Brown".
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Abm
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Abm
Post Number: 2784
Registered: 04-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Tuesday, May 17, 2005 - 02:18 pm: |
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Kola,
I didn't say there was anything WRONG with Morrion's Beloved. I think, though, Toni might felt that since she'd received such high acclaim...and a NOBEL PRIZE, no less...for Beloved, she's probably over the last 20 years felt she 'owed' it to Garner to tell more of HER story, not just a story that inspired by such. |
Kola
Moderator
Username: Kola
Post Number: 916
Registered: 02-2005
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Tuesday, May 17, 2005 - 02:25 pm: |
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Oh, sorry, ABM.
I think you're RIGHT.
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Abm
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Abm
Post Number: 2787
Registered: 04-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Tuesday, May 17, 2005 - 02:38 pm: |
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"...come to the edge, He said. They came. He pushed them...and they flew." |
Kola
Moderator
Username: Kola
Post Number: 918
Registered: 02-2005
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Tuesday, May 17, 2005 - 02:46 pm: |
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"...come to the edge, He said. They came. He pushed them...and they flew."
__________
Yeah, that White Man is something else.
I have to give him PROPS on being THE MAN.
My respect for him....grows daily.
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Abm
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Abm
Post Number: 2788
Registered: 04-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Tuesday, May 17, 2005 - 02:54 pm: |
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Say they yea, to "respect".
But what of thine heart,
thine love,
thine lust...First Womb?
(Who would sooner slit her own throat than deny even the most worthless n*%%@ thine quivering warmth.)
You will take what it is you most desperately want. You, Mother, always do.
That is, even be it alas to thee, why I am here. |
Kola
Moderator
Username: Kola
Post Number: 920
Registered: 02-2005
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Tuesday, May 17, 2005 - 03:00 pm: |
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NOW THAT'S COLD AS FUCK....
did you guys see that?
I swear ABM is the only man who can slay me.
That poem was BRILLIANT!! BRILLIANT!!!
Just fucking...absolutely bone-chillingly brilliant.
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Say they yea, to "respect".
But what of thine heart,
thine love,
thine lust...First Womb?
(Who would sooner slit her own throat than deny even the most worthless n*%%@ thine quivering warmth.)
You will take what it is you most desperately want. You, Mother, always do.
That is, even be it alas to thee, why I am here.
___________________
I love em, DESTINED. Just smile and be glad, girl.
You got the Fuck'n HOOK-UP girl.
But still ABM. As much as your poem floored and undid me......I am still advocating that black women DROWN (kill) the black man and give birth to him all over again in a new form.
Only WE have the power to do that...and it's time.
He's just too much of a punk bitch loser these days. Our whole world is dying, because he's so weak and misguided.
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Abm
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Abm
Post Number: 2791
Registered: 04-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Tuesday, May 17, 2005 - 04:12 pm: |
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Kola,
You would slay your God, your King...your Son? |
Abm
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Abm
Post Number: 2792
Registered: 04-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Tuesday, May 17, 2005 - 04:13 pm: |
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You, who have made of me a weak and trifling deity, now abandon me? |
Abm
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Abm
Post Number: 2793
Registered: 04-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Tuesday, May 17, 2005 - 04:17 pm: |
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Will you be for a pink or yellow man,
Imagine that, if you can,
As for him you feign to thrive,
when you’d rather be not alive. |
Kola
Moderator
Username: Kola
Post Number: 922
Registered: 02-2005
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Tuesday, May 17, 2005 - 04:28 pm: |
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It's time for the Black Woman to give birth to the Authentic Black man.
And the day will surely come....when black generations will look at the works of Snoop Dogg and Ice T. in utter disgust....
....and will be embarrassed to watch a Sidney Poitier film....
...and will LAUGH at pictures of Michael Jackson and Kobe Bryant and their white children.
And this is the POWER....of abandonment and too much time...on women's minds.
So you can save it ABM.
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Abm
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Abm
Post Number: 2796
Registered: 04-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Tuesday, May 17, 2005 - 04:51 pm: |
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Kola,
There you go again conveniently leaving the many-white-women-marrying Quincy Jones out of your Trifling Kneegrow Hall of Shame.
Man! When I grow up, I want to have the kinda 'juice' Quincy's got! |
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