A monumental moment in music history is unfolding this season as a long-lost American masterpiece takes the stage for the first time in 138 years.
Edmond Dédé’s Morgiane, ou, Le Sultan d’Ispahan, believed to be the earliest surviving opera by a Black American composer, is finally receiving its long-overdue world premiere. Dédé, born in 1827 in New Orleans, the fourth generation of a free family living there, left the pervasive racism of the U.S. to build a distinguished career as a violinist, conductor, and composer that spanned the Atlantic Ocean. His magnum opus, a four-act French opera inspired by “Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves,” was never performed in his lifetime and was thought lost to history.
“This is the most important piece of American music that no one has ever heard,” says Patrick Dupre Quigley, artistic director designate of Opera Lafayette, the Washington, D.C.-based company bringing this historic work to life. The production is being presented in partnership with OperaCréole of New Orleans for four performances.
The premiere launched on Jan. 24 with a preview of excerpts at New Orleans’ St. Louis Cathedral — the site of Dédé’s baptism — and continues with fully staged productions at the Lincoln Theatre in Washington, D.C. (Feb. 3), Jazz at Lincoln Center’s Rose Theater in New York City (Feb. 5), and the University of Maryland’s Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center (Feb. 7).
The cast features soprano Mary Elizabeth Williams as Morgiane and bass Kenneth Kellogg as Sultan Kourouschah, along with soprano Nicole Cabell, baritone Joshua Conyers, tenor Chauncey Packer, bass-baritone Jonathan Woody, and OperaCréole’s principal singers and chorus. Quigley conducted the Louisiana Philharmonic Orchestra for the New Orleans preview and will lead the Opera Lafayette Orchestra, performing on historical instruments, for the rest of the tour.
Before the work could even be rehearsed, the first challenge was transforming Dédé’s 550-page handwritten 1887 manuscript into a usable score. Lost for over a century, it resurfaced in 2010 at Harvard University’s Houghton Library. Over two years, Quigley collaborated with Givonna Joseph, founder and artistic director of OperaCréole, to put the manuscript into modern musical notation and translate the libretto from French to English, creating the first-ever performance score and orchestral parts.
No two companies are better suited to mount Morgiane’s debut than this expert duo. Since its founding in 2011, OperaCréole has championed the rare classical repertoire of 19th-century New Orleans composers of color. The company’s work illuminates the city’s rich history of classical music — in 1796, before Louisiana even joined the Union, the first opera season in what is now the United States premiered there. A vibrant but under-recognized ecosystem of Black composers and singers whose contributions were often lost or stifled nonetheless flourished under the constraints of Jim Crow laws.
Founded in 1995, Opera Lafayette brings its own deep historical insight to the project. Renowned for its period-instrument performances of 17th-, 18th-, and 19th-century works, the company presents full seasons in Washington, D.C., and New York City. A leader in reviving historic operas — such as Jean-Philippe Rameau’s Io, which had its world premiere in May 2023 — Opera Lafayette also preserves rediscovered works, having released over a dozen recordings and two DVDs on the Naxos label.
The story behind Morgiane begins with Dédé himself, a trailblazing artist who overcame extraordinary challenges — racial discrimination, systemic barriers, and a competitive music market — to forge his own path. As a young man in New Orleans, he balanced working in a cigar factory with performing in small orchestras and studying European classical music under the city’s finest teachers. Seeking greater opportunities, he spent several years as a violinist in Mexico City before briefly returning to the U.S. and ultimately making his way to Paris in 1855, just before the Civil War.
Dédé studied with faculty from the Paris Conservatory before securing conducting roles in Rouen and Angers. He ultimately made his home in Bordeaux, where he held various positions as a music director and composer, producing a remarkable body of work spanning opera, ballet, and concert and popular music.
The score for Morgiane score reflects the full breadth of this artistry. Quigley says, “The music is new and engaging but also has a familiarity to the American ear.” Dédé’s work fuses European influences with Southern American and brass band traditions, creating a soundscape that is both innovative and accessible. It draws on the French bel canto tradition and features an expansive vocal range, elaborate ornamentation and coloratura, and dramatic emotional peaks, all within a through-composed structure, creating a seamless narrative.
Highlighting Dédé’s versatility, Quigley notes how the score blends these operatic conventions with a “musical-theater approach to drama” — brief but tuneful arias, fluid harmonic transitions, and lush orchestrations tailored to each character. In her program notes for the opera, musicologist Candace Bailey, who is currently working on the monograph Edmond Dédé and His World: The Context for Morgiane, points out that the score “reflects the composer’s extensive experience in cafés-concerts around [Bordeaux] (as well as in casinos in other cities) and mirrors the catchy melodies and harmonic style heard in them.” Dédé’s fluency in multiple musical styles — he also seamlessly incorporates Caribbean rhythms — demonstrates his mastery of operatic tradition and capacity to innovate with a distinctive voice.
Quigley also points to the composer’s roots: Dédé’s father was a wind band director, and certain passages where winds and brass take center stage without the strings, he says, “are some of the most touching and magical moments of the piece.”
Like its music, Morgiane’s themes resonate as strongly today as they did 138 years ago. The story follows a courageous woman who confronts a powerful sultan after he kidnaps her daughter. There’s a darkly comedic twist, and the tale concludes with truth and freedom prevailing over oppression.
It takes a village to revive a forgotten opera. A national community of partners and collaborators mobilized to bring this landmark work to life and make certain it has an impact far beyond the concert hall.
“We’ve made a concerted effort to ensure this historic opera reaches as wide an audience as possible,” says OperaCréole director Joseph. A host of organizations — including OPERA America’s National Opera Center, Historic New Orleans Collection, Coalition for African Americans in the Performing Arts, Opera Ebony, and the University of Maryland’s School of Music — “have stepped up to ensure that there are multiple ways for people to engage,” such as free and pay-what-you-wish performances and a livestream presentation. Community engagement events, such as panel discussions, master classes, and online salons, have been exploring Morgiane’s cultural and historical significance, while the manuscript score is on display through Feb. 28 in Washington, D.C., as part of the Folger Shakespeare Library’s Out of the Vault exhibit.
Generous funding has bolstered the project, including a $410,000 grant from the Ford Foundation to support production costs and the creation of a modern performance edition from Dédé’s original score, with additional funding provided by the National Endowment for the Arts and many other donors. Opera Fusion: New Works, a joint initiative between Cincinnati Opera and the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music, provided further resources for the team to revise the score’s first edition.
These efforts are meant to help establish Dédé in his rightful place in the classical canon. “The music of Dédé should be regularly played and sung in the opera houses and concert halls of the United States,” says Quigley. “It stands up to the music of his contemporaries and those who come after him in the American musical tradition.”
“Ultimately, real accessibility extends beyond these premiere performances,” Joseph says. “By creating a performance score and audio recording of Morgiane, we hope to provide crucial resources for other companies — a tangible foundation for future productions.”
More than a historic premiere, this production of Morgiane embodies what Joseph describes as “a broader vision of access — one that looks toward the long-term expansion of the American operatic canon.” With Morgiane receiving a universally positive reception so far, she says, “It’s clear that there’s a strong appetite for diverse and historically significant works like this, and we’re proud to be at the forefront of bringing them to light.”
