Organization

Admin

Seattle Opera

Stage director

Tazewell Thompson

Conductor

Kellen Gray

Set designer

Donald Eastman

Wigs, Hair, and Makeup Designer

Ashlee Naegle

Singer

Soprano

Tiffany Townsend

America Robinson

Aundi Marie Moore

Maggie Porter

Sarah Joyce Cooper

Minnie Tate

Ibidunni Ojikutu

Mabel Lewis

Mezzo-soprano

Hannah Catrin Jones

Jennie Jackson

Natalie Lewis

Goergia Gordon

Lisa Arrindell

Ella Sheppard

Tenor

Tyrone W. CHambers II

Isaac Dickerson

Martin Luther Clark

Frederick Loudin

Martin Bakari

Greene Evans

Baritone

Darren Drone

Edmund Watkins

Greg Watkins

Benjamin Holmes

Bass-baritone

Aubrey Allicock

Thomas Rutling

English

Jubilee

Seattle

United States

McCaw Hall

Jubilee Tazewell Thompson | Dianne Adams McDowell | Ingram

Public

Cristina Pardo Ramírez

Approved

Nineteenth century. A theater in Nashville, Tennessee. Thirteen members of The Fisk Jubilee Singers are gathering behind the curtain in vocal warmups, preparing to perform their concert of Spirituals. Post show, the singers retreat to the old military barracks set aside by northern abolitionists to house former slaves, now students and teachers of The Fisk Colored School. Eventually changed to Fisk University.

While turning over the earth in their pitiful vegetable garden, their excavation makes a gruesome discovery. Buried beneath the surface of the ground, instruments of slavery and bondage: chains; manacles; shackles; harnesses; iron masks and mouth muzzles. The singers sell them for Bibles and spellers. To raise funds for their school, the singers sing at a ladies’ tea, in a fashionable part of Nashville.

They sing for funds in small towns and street corners, through all kinds of weather. Stranded at a railway depot, a jeering white mob attack the singers and beat them, mercilessly. Undaunted, the singers pack their meager belongings and continue their fundraising tours. In a church basement practice hall rehearsal, the singers receive news of an invitation from Queen Victoria to sing at a command performance in England. The singers rehearse their program for the Queen.

Intermission

The Fisk Jubilee Singers arrive in London and, at Buckingham Palace, perform for Queen Victoria. They return home to Tennessee by ship, train, and horse-drawn carriage. In the following years, the men sing at the Apollo Theater in Harlem, NYC. The women sing at a special church service. The singers gather and listen, as a first recording of The Fisk Jubilee Singers is released. In the epilogue we hear their individual postmortems.

Performance credits (Cast & Crew )

Cast

Crew