#libretto

Audrey Marnay by Paolo Roversi

Zaporozhets’ za Dunayem (Kyiv, 1935)

Today’s staff pick is a rare libretto edition of Zaporozhets’ za Dunaem (“Cossacks Beyond the Danube”), published in Kyiv in 1935 by the State Academic Opera and Ballet Theatre of the Ukrainian SSR. This volume includes the libretto, press reviews, and commentary explaining a Soviet-era adaptation of the opera. 

Originally composed by Semen Hulak-Artemovsky (1813-1873) and premiered in 1863 in Saint Petersburg, Zaporozhets’ za Dunayem is one of the earliest and most influential Ukrainian-language operas. Hulak-Artemovsky, who was also a performer at the Mariinsky Theatre, drew inspiration from Italian and German “light” opera traditions, combining them with Ukrainian folk themes, language, and humor. The plot reflects the fate of the Zaporozhian Cossacks after the destruction of the Sich in 1775, when some fled to the Ottoman Empire and later returned. 

The 1935 edition reveals how the opera was reshaped in the Soviet period. According to the editors, elements of “national romanticism” were replaced with more comic, folkloric, and accessible material, better suited to a socialist audience. 

Today, the opera remains widely performed and has largely returned to its original form. This volume offers a glimpse into one moment of its transformation—and into the shifting meanings of Ukrainian cultural heritage across time. 

-- Kate, Special Collections Graduate Art History Fieldworker

I. WHAT IS A ‘SWAMP OPERA’?

All of this belongs to a tradition that doesn't yet have a name—but it has roots. Call it Swamp Opera: an intersection where the high drama of Operatic form meets the humid, decaying, supernatural landscape of the American South. It is Opera that smells like moss and tastes like salt. Opera that rises from the mud.

The term acknowledges two lineages:

Verismo Opera (Mascagni, Leoncavallo, Puccini): Gritty, earthy stories of ordinary people driven to extraordinary passion and violence.

Southern Gothic Literature (Faulkner, O'Connor, McCullers): Grotesque characters, moral decay, religious fervor dreams and the psychedelic weight of history pressing down on the present, on us.

Swamp Opera marries these traditions. It replaces the Sicilian villages of verismo with Louisiana bayous. It gives the grotesque characters of Southern Gothic a voice that can soar. It makes the land itself a character—not a backdrop, but a presence that breathes, waits and ultimately claims what belongs to it.

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II. THE SOUND OF THE SWAMP: Southern Gothic & Dark Americana

The score of Sugar Hill draws from two distinct but related aesthetic traditions. Understanding them is essential to understanding the Opera's musical language.

Southern Gothic (The ‘High Art’ Tradition)

Southern Gothic in music is characterized by:

Lush dissonance: Chords that are beautiful and unsettling at the same time, like a summer afternoon that feels like a high pressure cell of a threat.

Atmospheric strings: Low, sustained droning that mimic the weight of humidity, the hum of insects, the patience of the swamp.

Lonely woodwinds: A solo oboe or duduk playing a repetitive, slightly out-of-tune bird-call—the sound of being watched by something non-human.

Unrelieved tension: Music that never fully resolves, that holds its dissonance like the South holds its history.

Key reference: Carlisle Floyd's Susannah (1955) Often called the ‘father of American Opera,’ Floyd's masterpiece is set in rural Tennessee and uses Appalachian folk melodies transformed into tragic, sweeping orchestral language. It captures the judgmental energy of a small community and the oppressive weight of nature. Susannah is the essential text for understanding how to make American folk music Operatic without losing its grit.

What we borrow from Floyd:

The ‘Swamp Drone’: Low, sustained strings that never quite resolve.

The ‘Stuttering Woodwind’: A solo voice that repeats, fragments, decays.

The use of folk melodies as the foundation for tragic arias.

Dark Americana (The ‘Folk’ Tradition)

Dark Americana is rooted in the soil of American folk music—but slowed down, distorted and turned toward the shadows. It is characterized by:

Percussive folk instruments: Banjo, fiddle, slide guitar, played not for virtuosity but for texture.

Rhythmic work-song pulses: The sound of bodies working, suffering, persisting.

A cappella ritual: Voices alone, creating both melody and percussion through hocketing, polyphonic humming and body sounds.

Found sound: The use of chains, wooden crates, bowed metal—instruments that come from the physical world of the Bayou.

Key reference: Rhiannon Giddens' Omar (2022) Giddens' Opera (co-composed with Michael Abels) tells the story of an enslaved Muslim man who wrote his autobiography in Arabic. It uses banjo, fiddle and percussive foot-stomping in ways that feel both ancient and utterly new. Giddens reclaims folk instruments from their ‘quaint’ associations and reveals their capacity for tragedy.

What we borrow from Giddens:

The banjo as a percussive, ‘stabbing’ instrument, not a pretty one.

The use of folk forms (work songs, spirituals) as the basis for operatic structures.

The integration of a cappella sections that use the human voice as both melody and percussion.

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III. THE INSTRUMENTS: Two Sounds, Two Worlds

At the heart of Sugar Hill's sound is a dual-instrument system: a guitar and a banjo that function as opposing moral forces. They are not just instruments; they are characters.

The National Style O Resonator Guitar (The Mob)

Sound: Brassy, metallic, aggressive. It ‘honks’ rather than sings.

Association: The City, capitalism, corruption, Morgan and his men.

Musical style: Debased P Funk, jagged rhythms, staccato attacks.

Dramatic function: Represents what the Mob thinks Power is—loud, visible, bought.

Fate: In Act Two, the Resonator is detuned, played by a zombie having a bad acid trip—the sound of a world that has been swallowed whole.

Listening reference: The soundtrack to Shaft (1971), but played through a speaker underwater and a thousand years ago.

The Deering Vega Vintage Star Banjo (The Swamp)

Sound: Ghostly, woody, shimmering. Its Dobson tone ring creates a sustain that hangs in the air like stagnant water.

Association: The Bayou, the Spirits, the Dead, the Truth.

Musical style: Drones, open tunings, modal harmonies, silence.

Dramatic function: Represents what Power actually is—ancient, patient, eternal.

Fate: In Act Two, the Vega becomes the dominant voice of the Opera, swallowing the Resonator's sounds and transforming them.

Listening reference: The scores of Nick Cave and Warren Ellis (see: The Assassination of Jesse James), but with the harmonics of a sitar and the decay of a banjo played on a Louisiana porch at dusk.

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IV. THE RITUALS: Voodoo-Pop vs. The Real Thing

One of the Opera's central structural ideas is the contrast between two rituals: one false, one true. This contrast is communicated through music, movement and staging.

The Club Haiti Ritual (Act I, Scene 1)

What it is: A tourist show. Voodoo as entertainment, commodified, safe.

Music: Syncopated Disco, the National Resonator dominant, major keys, predictable structures. (‘Yeah. White is so much... whiter.’)

Movement: Theatrical ‘Possession’—dancers twitch on cue, roll their eyes on the downbeat. It's choreographed. It's a performance.

Atmosphere: Warm amber light, applause, cocktails. Nothing is actually happening.

Dramatic function: Establishes what the Mob thinks Vodoun is. Sets a trap for the Audience: they think they know what's coming. They don't. This is for the tourists in the Audience yelling, 'sock it to me, baby' and other 1970 slang delights.

The Bayou Ritual (Act I, Scene 5)

What it is: The real thing. Sugar's invocation of the Baron, her pact with the Dead.

Music: Drones, polyphonic humming, the Vega emerging from beneath the Resonator and slowly overwhelming it. The shift from major to modal harmonies. (‘Well, whatever it is, you could use some of it.’) Silence as a structural element.

Movement: Crise de Locher—The convulsive onset of Possession. If there is any duende to be found in this, it is here. This is not choreographed; it is visceral. The body moves involuntarily. The Spirit takes the ‘Rider’ (the Possessed person) as a Horse.

Atmosphere: Silver-blue light, fog, the smell of ozone and mud. The Audience should feel that something sacred and dangerous is happening.

Dramatic function: The mask drops. The real Power emerges. The Mob's confidence is revealed as ignorance.

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V. HISTORICAL PRECEDENTS: What Came Before

It is my hope that Sugar Hill stands in a lineage of American Art that engage with Southern history and Supernatural themes. As I stated in the beginning:

What I can offer, though, is an act of listening—to the Scholars, Musicians and Traditions that have long cultivated the soil from which this work grows. This libretto has been shaped by deep study and love of Black composers (Harry Lawrence Freeman, Florence Price, Margaret Bonds) and contemporary practitioners (Rhiannon Giddens, Nicole Brooks, Jessie Montgomery) whose work demonstrates how to honor these Traditions with rigor and care.

Understanding this lineage is essential for placing the work in context.

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Harry Lawrence Freeman (1869-1954) — The ‘Colored Wagner’

Freeman was an African American composer of the Harlem Renaissance who wrote over twenty Operas. His work Voodoo (1928) is the closest historical relative to Sugar Hill.

Setting: A Louisiana plantation.

Plot: A love triangle, a Voodoo Queen named Lolo, a full ritual ceremony.

Musical style: Wagnerian leitmotifs infused with spirituals, chants and jazz.

Key moment: The ‘Voodoo Queen Aria,’ noted for its malevolent energy and ‘effectively barbaric’ orchestral moments.

What we borrow: The integration of ritual into Operatic form; the treatment of Vodoun as a legitimate Spiritual force, not exotic Spectacle.

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Florence Price (1887-1953) — The Symphonic Voice

Price was the first Black woman to have a symphony performed by a major Orchestra. Her music incorporates Spirituals, Juba dances and the Blues into classical forms.

Relevance: Her Symphonies Nos. 1 and 3 demonstrate how to use African American folk forms as the foundation for ‘High Art’ music without losing their cultural specificity.

What we borrow: The integration of Blues harmonies into orchestral writing; the use of folk rhythms as structural elements.

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Margaret Bonds (1913-1972) — The Spiritual Reimagined

Bonds was a composer and pianist who worked closely with Langston Hughes. Her settings of Spirituals transformed them from ‘folk songs’ into concert works of tremendous power.

Relevance: Her Spiritual Suite shows how to treat Spirituals not as quaint artifacts but as vessels of grief, resistance and transcendence.

What we borrow: The treatment of THE CHORUS OF THE DEAD'S humming as a Spiritual without words—a sound that carries centuries of meaning.

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VI. CONTEMPORARY REFERENCES: Who Is Doing This Now

Sugar Hill is not alone in its aesthetic. These living composers are working in related territory:

Rhiannon Giddens (b. 1977)

Key work: Omar (2022, with Michael Abels)

What she does: Uses banjo, fiddle and percussive folk forms in operatic contexts. Reclaims folk instruments from their ‘quaint’ associations.

Relevance to Sugar Hill: The percussive banjo technique; the integration of a cappella sections; the centering of Black historical experience. )

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Jessie Montgomery (b. 1981)

Key work: Voodoo Dolls (2008)

What she does: Uses West African drumming patterns and lyrical chant motives in instrumental contexts. High-energy, rhythmic, ritualistic.

Relevance to Sugar Hill: The rhythmic language for the Invocation; the use of chant as a structural element.

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Nicole Brooks (b. 1970)

Key work: Obeah Opera (2015)

What she does: A strictly a cappella Opera telling the story of the Salem witch trials through Tituba, a Black slave. Uses Ska, Calypso and traditional Caribbean folk music. The Chorus creates both melody and percussion through hocketing, polyphonic humming and body sounds.

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