WPI Music Professor Lucy Caplan will discuss her first book, Dreaming in Ensemble (Harvard University Press, 2025), an account of the origins of Black opera in America and "how Black performers, composers, and critics resisted the prejudices of the world around to them to make opera their own." (publisher's site).
All are welcome to join us for this exciting addition to the 24-25 Authors Unbound series of conversations with authors across all genres on Thursday April 10 from 3-4:30pm in the Gordon Library Conference Room (Room 303).
Professor Caplan will be joined in conversation by WPI Prof. Sarah Lucie (HUA), a scholar of theater and performance, to explore the history and ideas shared in her book. As the publisher writes, "Marian Anderson’s 1955 Metropolitan Opera debut often marks our earliest cultural memory of Black opera in America. But before Anderson, before icons like Leontyne Price or Kathleen Battle, there were trailblazers such as Caterina Jarboro — the first Black woman to sing the role of Aida in the United States — or Sissieretta Jones, the first Black woman to sing at Carnegie Hall."
A playlist curated by Prof. Caplan can also be found on the publisher's site. It offers a chapter-by-chapter accompaniment to the book, including a handful of rare, recently reissued modern renditions of once-forgotten music.
