Opera Creole. It’s an intriguing name for a musical group that conjures up numerous possible meanings. Do they sing opera standards in Creole? If so, is it Haitian Creole or Louisiana Creole? Or do they sing music written by Creole people? If so, which definition of Creole people are they going with? Have any Creole people written operas in the first place? But Opera Creole isn’t really any of these things; it’s more like this:

Not that I have anything against Scott Joplin, and Treemonisha is certainly a hidden musical gem, but what does the work of the originator of ragtime, a native Texarkanian, have to do with anything Creole?

I saw this group a couple weeks ago at the Rayne Memorial United Methodist Church in New Orleans and what I discovered was an attempt to paint a portrait of the musical life of Creole people in the city during the 19th century. The program has headings that touch on favorite arias, compositions by Creole composers, and.. African-American 20th century spirituals?

Again, how does Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess or Bernstein’s Mass fit in with Creole musical life in 19th century New Orleans? Why include music from an entirely different century in an entirely different styles, particularly when the name of the group, Opera Creole, suggests that the music they perform will be operatic? This sort of disparate arrangement of sources creates an incoherence that’s really a missed opportunity to focus on some of the things mentioned above, which to my knowledge are entirely absent from any group performing today.

Opera Creole verges on some truly unique programming choices, though. The set begins with E tan patate and Fais dodo (Go to Sleep) and ends with Cher, mo lémmé toi (Dear, I Love You), three Louisiana folksongs arranged by musician Camille Nickerson. This was the first time I had ever heard, or even heard of, classically-oriented music sung in Louisiana Creole. One would be hard pressed to find examples of the language in Cajun music, la-la, or Zydeco, let alone orchestral music. The group also had the audience sing two repeated lines from the last piece, providing an opportunity to learn a common Creole phrase (Mo lémmé toi kòm ti kochon lémmé labou [forgive the spelling], I love you like small pigs love mud). A whole program dedicated to this type of thing would go a long way towards giving the group a unique twist while also helping to maintain an endangered local language, yet these songs acted simply as bookends to a very different collection.

Little-known Creole composers, such as Edmond Dédé and Samuel Snaër, also fit into the program. In this case, I mean Creole as in 19th century concept, which essentially included anyone born in Louisiana. This confuses the matter even more as Opera Creole seems to be going by the more modern definition of Creole, meaning anyone of African and French descent born in Louisiana, or perhaps just anyone of African descent period. Ultimately, I’m not sure what Opera Creole is really about, but this idea of the changing definitions of Creole may be worth a follow up post.