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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 April 2022
This article considers the parallel histories of the opera houses in Cairo, Egypt and Cape Town, South Africa. Their respective stories reflect common and divergent experiences of the colonial and postcolonial and the emergent national and nationalist identities at the terminal cities of Africa. Considered separately from the content performed on their stages, the article traces the significance of the buildings as part of their cities. In each city the opera house has been destroyed and rebuilt, under new regimes with new purposes. The discursive value of opera houses is considered more broadly, with evidence presented for the houses as functionaries of the ‘operatic state’ or impresarialist institutions. Who is welcomed in and courted at the opera house is investigated as part of the phenomenon of a nominally public space with conventionalised issues of access.
1 The Rhodes Colossus – Cornell University Library Digital Collections: Persuasive Maps: PJ Mode Collection.
2 Dolkart, Ronald, ‘Elitelore at the Opera: The Teatro Colón of Buenos Aires’, Journal of Latin American Lore 9/2 (1983), 231–50Google Scholar.
3 Dolkart, ‘Elitelore at the Opera’, 236–7.
4 Aspden, Suzanne, ed., Operatic Geographies: The Place of Opera and the Opera House (Chicago, 2019)Google Scholar.
5 Kerry Murphy, ‘Thomas Quinlan (1881–1951) and His “All-Red” Opera Tours, 1912 and 1913’, in Operatic Geographies, ed. Aspden, 133–47.
6 In the early twentieth century, for example, Italians built an opera house in Asmara, Eritrea, programming works from the Italian opera tradition. It later become a cinema (Lichtenfels, Peter and Rouse, John, Performance Politics and Activism (Basingstoke, 2013), 59CrossRefGoogle Scholar), and today is occasionally re-opened to host public events (Yousief Z. Abraham, ‘Asmara Opera House Embarks Celebrating Its Hundredth Service Years, Theatrical Performances Engulf Residents’, Madote (2017), www.madote.com/2017/11/asmara-opera-house-embarks-celebrating.html). In much more recent history, diplomatic ties with Europe were strengthened by attempts to enliven European opera in Africa, such as Opera Abuja in Nigeria, a branch of AMEMUSO (Abuja Metropolitan Music Society) and the legacy project of Maria Cecilia Toledo, the wife of a former German Ambassador to Nigeria (Akumbu Uche, ‘Fun Galore at Farewell Concert for “Opera Abuja” Founder’, Echo Online (9 June 2011), https://unijosechoonline.wordpress.com/2011/06/09/fun-galore-at-farewell-concert-for-opera-abuja-founder/). The project began in 2006 and was still running in 2017 (Bridger Chiedu, ‘OperaAbuja 2017 … A Fertile Ground for Talent Development’, The Guardian (2 December 2017), https://guardian.ng/news/operaabuja-2017-a-fertile-ground-for-talent-development/). Regarding African content in opera, Nobel Prize-winning author Wole Soyinka riffed on Gay's The Beggar's Opera in his 1977 satire of Nigerian politics, Opera Wonyosi (Bloomington, IN, 1977/1981) and from the late to post-apartheid eras South Africa has seen numerous adaptations from the standard Western operatic canon, vernacular treatments and translations, as well as new opera (see Hilde Roos, ‘Opera Production in the Western Cape: Strategies in Search of Indigenisation’ (PhD diss., Stellenbosch University, 2010); and Hilde Roos, ‘Indigenisation and History: How Opera in South Africa became South African Opera’, Acta Academica, Supplement 1 (2012), 117–55).
7 An exception is the case of the state theatre in Pretoria, a central statement of apartheid-era Afrikaner nationalism as distinct from the British colonial history of Cape Town (see Pyper, Brett, ‘Recomposing Apartheid at Pretoria State Theatre, 1990–1994. A Personal Recollection’, in Composing Apartheid: Music For and Against Apartheid, ed. Olwage, Grant (Johannesburg, 2008), 239–56)Google Scholar.
8 Daniel Magaziner and Sean Jacobs, ‘The End of South African Exceptionalism’, The Atlantic (27 August 2012), www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2012/08/the-end-of-south-african exceptionalism/261591/. See also Dickson, Jessica, South African Anthropology in Conversation: An Intergenerational Conversation on the History and Future of Social Anthropology in South Africa (Bambenda, 2015), xxxixGoogle Scholar.
9 Rodenbeck, Max, Cairo: The City Victorious (New York, 2000), 179–80Google Scholar.
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11 Sims, David, Understanding Cairo: The Logic of a City Out of Control (Cairo, 2012), 14Google Scholar.
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14 See Mestyan's, Adam Arab Patriotism: The Ideology and Culture of Power in Late Ottoman Egypt (Princeton, 2017)Google Scholar.
15 Bergeron's, Katherine ‘Verdi's Egyptian Spectacle: On the Colonial Subject of “Aida”’, Cambridge Opera Journal 14 (2002), 149–59CrossRefGoogle Scholar, explores Aida as spectacle in the context of opera history and the reality of Khedivial Cairo.
16 Lababidi, Lesley, Cairo's Street Stories: Exploring the City's Statues, Squares, Bridges, Gardens and Sidewalk Cafés (Cairo, 2008), 58Google Scholar.
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18 Rodenbeck, Cairo, 131.
19 Rifaat, Mohamed, The Awakening of Modern Egypt, 2nd edn (Cairo, 2005), 86–9Google Scholar. See also Rodenbeck, Cairo, 132–3.
20 Rodenbeck, Cairo, 134.
21 Rifaat, The Awakening of Modern Egypt, 162.
22 Rodenbeck, Cairo, 132–3.
23 Adam Mestyan, ‘Arabic Theatre in Early Khedivial Culture, 1868–72: James Sanua Revisited’, International Journal of Middle Eastern Studies 46 (2014), 117–37, at 123.
24 Rodenbeck, Cairo, 146.
25 Mahfouz, Naguib, The Cairo Trilogy: Palace Walk, Palace of Desire, Sugar Street (Cairo, 2001), 16Google Scholar, 78.
26 Rodenbeck, Cairo, 165.
27 El-Shawan, Salwa, ‘Western Music and Its Practitioners in Egypt (ca. 1825–1985): The Integration of a New Musical Tradition in a Changing Environment’, Asian Music 17 (1985), 143–53, at 143CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
28 Neveen Allouba, Author's interview, Cairo, Egypt (September 2015).
29 Hassan, Hassan, In the House of Muhammad Ali: A Family Album 1805–1959 (Cairo, 2000), 107–8Google Scholar.
30 Personal communication (2017). Professor Azza Madian is a musicologist in the Department of the Arts at the American University in Cairo.
31 Mestyan, Adam, ‘Power and Music in Cairo: Azbakiyya’, Urban History 40 (2013), 681–704, at 697Google Scholar.
32 Mestyan, ‘Power and Music in Cairo’, 700.
33 Sherif Awad, ‘Fire in Cairo: New Documentary Explores the Burning of the Cairo Opera House’, Egypt Independent (14 January 2011), www.egyptindependent.com/news/fire-cairo-new-documentary-explores-burning-cairo-operahouse; Kamal Abdel Aziz, The Burning of the Cairo Opera (320 Dreamland, 2011), 40 min. See also Hassan, In the House of Muhammad Ali, 109.
34 Rodenbeck, Cairo, 191.
35 Jonathan Guyer, ‘A Fire in Cairo’, Institute of Current World Affairs (2 July 2016), www.icwa.org/a-fire-in-cairo/.
36 Roos, ‘Indigenisation and History’, 123.
37 Roos, ‘Indigenisation and History’, 124.
38 Ertman, Thomas, ‘Opera, the State and Society’, in The Cambridge Companion to Opera Studies, ed. Till, Nicholas (Cambridge, 2012), 25–52CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 25.
39 The term ‘coloured’ is used here in its historical sense in the South African context. Gaining currency as a marker of mixed-race citizens during apartheid, it continues to generate controversy as a descriptor of various, heterogenous mixed-race groups in the country. In contemporary South Africa it is variously embraced, modified, re-appropriated or rejected outright. Its use here is restricted to the historical sense, and is necessary to understand the issues of access discussed in the following. To break the epistemic violence of ongoing uses of the term, I have also noted cases where the marker is rejected, as well as offering further context in specific discussions.
40 Malan, Jacques, ‘Opera Houses in South Africa’, in The World of South African Music: A Reader, ed. Lucia, Christine (Cambridge, 2005), 125–8, at 127Google Scholar.
41 Roos, ‘Opera Production in the Western Cape’, 34.
42 Knox, Catherine, Victorian Life at the Cape: 1870–1900 (Cape Town, 1992), 58Google Scholar.
43 Knox, Victorian Life at the Cape, 69.
44 Knox, Victorian Life at the Cape, 68.
45 Knox, Victorian Life at the Cape, 95.
46 Application for licences, bioscope exhibitions at the Opera House. 1911, 1912. 97G/11. 3/CT. 4/2/1/1/113. Cape Town Orchestra. Western Cape Archives and Records. Cape Town, Western Cape, South Africa.
47 Peter W. Bodie, ‘A History of Theatre in South Africa Part 2’, Scenaria 22 (November 1980/January 1981), 39–40, at 40.
48 Peter W. Bodie, ‘A History of Theatre in South Africa Part 3’ Scenaria 22 (January–March 1981), 37–38, at 38.
49 Cape Town Orchestra. B8765. 3/CT. 4/1/5/151. Western Cape Archives and Records, Cape Town, Western Cape, South Africa.
50 Roos, ‘Indigenisation and History’, 127.
51 Cape Town Orchestra. B8765. 3/CT. 4/1/5/151. Western Cape Archives and Records, Cape Town, Western Cape, South Africa.
52 Bereson, Ruth, The Operatic State: Cultural Policy and the Opera House (London, 2002)Google Scholar.
53 William Pickerill, letter to the Cape Argus (17 February 1930). B8765. 3/CT, 4/1/5/151. Western Cape Archives and Records, Cape Town, South Africa.
54 Sybil Monk. Correspondence with the Opera House regarding a production of Peter Pan. B8765. 3/CT. 4/1/5/151. Cape Town Orchestra. Western Cape Archives and Records, Cape Town, Western Cape, South Africa (1932).
55 Gladys Lazarus, correspondence with the Opera House regarding a production of Toad of Toad Hall. B8765. 3/CT. 4/1/5/151. Cape Town Orchestra. Western Cape Archives and Records, Cape Town, Western Cape, South Africa (1932).
56 Roos, ‘Indigenisation and History’, 127.
57 Bickford-Smith, Vivian, Ethnic Pride and Racial Prejudice in Victorian Cape Town: Group Identity and Social Practice 1875–1902 (Cambridge, 1995), 13Google Scholar.
58 Knox, Victorian Life at the Cape, 178.
59 Knox, Victorian Life at the Cape, 26. This central location and the long journey to fundraise and establish it in this position does not, however, make it the first opera theatre in the country. Port Elizabeth established an opera house one year before Cape Town in 1892 (Roos, ‘Opera Production in the Western Cape’, 44). That building still exists today and continues to function as a theatre.
60 Bohlman, Philip V., World Music: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford, 2002), 47CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
61 El-Shawan, ‘Western Music and Its Practitioners in Egypt’, 145.
62 El-Shawan, ‘Western Music and Its Practitioners in Egypt’, 146.
63 Rodenbeck, Cairo, 191.
64 Reda El-Wakil. Author's interview, Cairo, Egypt (September 2015).
65 Personal communication, 2017. Supported in El-Shawan, ‘Western Music and Its Practitioners in Egypt’, 151.
66 Alan Cowell, ‘Cairo Journal: Phantom No More, an Opera House Comes to Life’, New York Times (8 October 1988), www.nytimes.com/1988/10/08/world/cairo-journal-phantom-no-more-an-opera-house-comes-to-life.html.
67 Saleh quoted in Cowell, ‘Phantom No More’.
68 Cowell, ‘Phantom No More’.
69 Cowell, ‘Phantom No More’.
70 Sims, Understanding Cairo, 25–7.
71 The Muhammad Ali Mosque in the citadel has an extravagant example of this in the main prayer hall.
72 An increase in the number and frequency of Arab and Egyptian art, folk and contemporary music performances is discernable in the programming of the opera house over the last thirty years. Like theatres everywhere, it works to broaden its appeal and patron base. Mena, ‘Cairo Opera House Launches New Season with 20 Arab, Foreign Countries Participating’, Egypt Today (30 August 2018), www.egypttoday.com/Article/4/56886/Cairo-Opera-House-launches-new-season-with-20-Arab-foreign.
73 Dickinson, Kay, ‘Introduction: “Arab” + “Avant-Garde”’, in The Arab Avant-Garde: Music, Politics, Modernity, ed. Burkhalter, Thomas, Dickinson, Kay and Harbert, Benjamin (Middletown, CT, 2013), 1–36Google Scholar.
74 Ati Metwaly, ‘Ines Abdel-Dayem Returns to the Cairo Opera More Dynamic than Ever’, Al-Ahram (1 August 2013), http://atimetwaly.com/2013/08/01/ines-abdel-dayem-returns-to-the-cairo-opera-more-dynamic-than-ever/.
75 Metwaly, ‘Ines Abdel-Dayem Returns to the Cairo Opera’.
76 I am indebted to Celeste Reynolds of the Artscape archives for both her contribution to the big picture of the Nico Malan/Artscape and her attention to the finest details.
77 Vivian Bickford-Smith, Elizabeth van Heyningen and Nigel Worden, Cape Town in the Twentieth Century: An Illustrated Social History (Cape Town, 1999), 67.
78 Gobbato, Angelo, A Passion for Opera (Auckland Park, 2018), 66Google Scholar.
79 Gobbato, A Passion for Opera, 66
80 Julius Eichbaum, ‘Comment: The Bloemfontein “Monument” Part Two’, Scenaria 39 (September 1983), 11.
81 Julius Eichbaum, ‘Comment: An Opera House for Johannesburg, Dream or Reality (or Cenerentola)’, Scenaria 2 (June/July 1977), 12.
82 Julius Eichbaum, ed., Scenaria 2 (June/July 1977), 13. Eichbaum's editorials and articles in the journal Scenaria provide a very particular but worthwhile look into the essentially patrician views and tastes of the Anglo-South African opera fan at the time. There was an expectation of European standards at South African theatres that fed into a bias against the productions of the arts councils of the time. It is possible to detect a political resistance to the apartheid regimes’ plans and trajectory as a putative operatic state, but this is only in so far as the opera productions that the state produced fell short of an aesthetic ideal. The constant implication is artistic parochialism, and it does not touch the political truths of the day.
83 Eghard van der Hoven, director of PACT, letter reproduced in Julius Eichbaum, ed., Scenaria 2 (June/July 1977), 1.
85 Besteman, Catherine, Transforming Cape Town (Berkeley, CA, 2008), 132Google Scholar.
86 Karen Breytenbach, ‘New Names for Cape Town Streets’, IOL News (26 July 2007), www.iol.co.za/news/politics/new-names-for-cape-town-streets-363539.
87 Peter Manning, ‘Racism in Three Dimensions: South African Architecture and the Ideology of White Superiority’, Social Identities 10 (2004), 527–36.
88 Gordon-Brown, Alfred, Pictorial Africana: A Survey of Old South African Paintings Drawings and Prints to the End of the Nineteenth Century with a Biographical Dictionary of One Thousand Artists (Rotterdam, 1975), 159–60Google Scholar.
89 Ashraf Jamal, ‘Revealing Picture’, Financial Mail (28 March–2 April 2014), 54–5.
90 Robert Silke, ‘Foreshore Freeways Project: End of the Road For a Brave New Cape Town’, Daily Maverick (31 July 2018), https://dailymaverick.co.za/article/2018-07-31-end-of-the-road-for-a-brave-new-cape-town/.
91 See, for instance, John Snelson, The Phantom on Film. Screen Adaptations of Le Fantôme de l'Opéra: Routes of Cultural Transfer (2017), https://thephantomonfilm.com/2017/08/john-snelson/.
92 Goldblatt, David and Gordimer, Nadine, On the Mines (Steidl, 2012)Google Scholar.
93 Celeste Reynolds, Author's interview, Cape Town, South Africa (July 2019).
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95 Gobbato personal communication, Cape Town, 2016.
96 Nicola Cloete, Zimitri Erasmus and Adam Haupt, among others, have written on the socio-historical, socio-political and musical manifestations of this identity, persistently pigeonholed as interstitial. Though it falls beyond the scope of this site-specific research, Roos has written extensively on the struggles of ‘coloured’ participation in opera in South Africa. Singers set up their own EOAN ensemble in the face of racial exclusion from mainstream opera in South Africa: Roos, Hilde, The La Traviata Affair: Opera in the Age of Apartheid (Berkeley, CA, 2018)Google Scholar; Nicola Cloete, ‘Memory, Slavery, Nation: An Analysis of Representations of Slavery in Post-Apartheid Culture and Memory Production’ (PhD diss., University of the Witwatersrand, 2015); Zimitri Erasmus, Race Otherwise: Forging a New Humanism for South Africa (Johannesburg, 2017); Haupt, Adam, Static: Race and Representation in Post-Apartheid Music, Media and Film (Cape Town, 2012)Google Scholar.
97 Published 1965, staged 1975 (Small, Adam, Kanna Hy Kô Hystoe (Cape Town, 1999)Google Scholar). In order to resist the lifelong epistemic violence, which silenced him as a writer for nearly three decades, it is necessary to state that the use of ‘coloured’ as a qualifier to his activities was what Small resisted. It is used here as a description of his role in historical resistance rather than a categorisation of him and his work.
98 Chris Barron, ‘Obituary: Adam Small, “Kaaps” Poet Who Set Himself Up Against Afrikaner Establishment’, Sunday Times (3 July 2016), www.timeslive.co.za/sunday-times/opinion-and-analysis/2016–07–03-obituary-adam-small-kaaps-poet-who-set-himself-up-against-afrikaner-establishment/.
99 Uys Krige, ‘In Protest Against Opera House Ban’, Cape Times (15 March 1971).
100 Leslie Blackwell, ‘Opera House Ban is Folly’, Cape Times (16 August 1971).
101 Roos, ‘Opera Production in the Western Cape’, 135.
102 Julius Eichbaum, ‘Nico Malan Theatre Centre’, Scenaria 3 (December 1977–January 1978), 14.
103 Roz Wrottesley, ‘Artscape's Passion and Pain’, Cape Argus (30 July 1999).
104 Wrottesley, ‘Artscape's Passion and Pain’.
105 Brent Meersman, ‘Artscape's 1.5-billion Revamp Plan’, Mail & Guardian (14 December 2012), https://mg.co.za/article/2012-12-14-artscapes-r15-billion-revamp-plan.
106 Quoted in Wrottesley, ‘Artscape's Passion and Pain’.
107 Mestyan, ‘Power and Music in Cairo’, 704.
108 Mestyan, ‘Power and Music in Cairo’, 704.
109 Mhlambi, Innocentia J., ‘Embodied Discordance: Vernacular Idioms in Winnie: The Opera’, African Studies 75 (2016), 48–73CrossRefGoogle Scholar; André, Naomi, ‘Winnie, Opera, and South African Artistic Nationhood’, African Studies 75 (2016), 10–31CrossRefGoogle Scholar.