The "La Traviata" Affair: Opera in the Age of ApartheidRace, politics, and opera production during apartheid South Africa intersect in this historiographic work on the Eoan Group, a “coloured” cultural organization that performed opera in the Cape. The La Traviata Affair charts Eoan’s opera activities from the group’s inception in 1933 until the cessation of their productions by 1980. It explores larger questions of complicity, compromise, and compliance; of assimilation, appropriation, and race; and of “European art music” in situations of “non-European” dispossession and disenfranchisement. Performing under the auspices of apartheid, the group’s unquestioned acceptance of and commitment to the art of opera could not redeem it from the entanglements that came with the political compromises it made. Uncovering a rich trove of primary source materials, Hilde Roos presents here for the first time the story of one of the premier cultural agencies of apartheid South Africa. |
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Abrahamse activities Alessandro Rota Alhambra Theatre apartheid Arts Festival ballet Benjamin Arendse BEST OPERA SUCCESS Cape Argus Cape Town City Cape Town Municipal Cavalleria Rusticana City Hall Conductor coloured community Conductor Joseph Manca cultural dancers Die Burger District Six Eoan Group Archive EOAN IS EOAN Eoan members Eoan's EOAN'S BEST OPERA Executive Committee folder funding Gerald Samaai Giuseppe Verdi Gordon Jephtas Hall Conductor Joseph Ibid Il Trovatore interview Ismail Sydow jazz Johannesburg Joseph Gabriels Joseph Manca Orchestra La Bohème La Traviata Lionel Fourie Manca Orchestra Cape March newspaper Opera Company opera production opera season operetta Orchestra Cape Town Orchestra Producer Cast Patricia van Graan performance political Programme booklet racial Rigoletto role SCALA AND EOAN SCALA IS SCALA singing SLOW DEATH soloists Sophia Andrews soprano South Africa Southern-Holt Stellenbosch University tion tour Town City Hall Town Municipal Orchestra TWILIGHT AND LOSS Ulster Venue Cape Town Violetta