The Mingling of Opera Genres

This chapter analyzes in depth the operas performed in the late nineteenth century in Rouen. The repertory that was produced from 1882 in the new Théâtre des Arts illustrates how a provincial theater would differ significantly, in terms of the genres presented, from the Opéra or the Opéra-Comique in Paris. Like all regional theaters, the one in Rouen adapted itself to the constraints of a national system shaped by Parisian production, but it was also expected to defer to local tastes and performing conditions. The public thus saw a much greater variety of genres than was presented in the capital city. The new works produced there were often objects of local pride; for example, since Pierre Corneille had been born locally, the theater produced Jules Massenet’s setting of Le Cid. This chapter is paired with Patrick Taïeb and Sabine Teulon Lardic’s “The evolution of French opera repertories in provincial theaters: Three epochs, 1770–1900.”

Postblackness’s Ancestors and Relatives or “The Past Pushing Us into the Present”

This coda discusses recent revivals of the five plays examined in this book. The plays have been staged in a range of venues over the last ten years. A Raisin in the Sun, for example, returned to Broadway in 2014 and earned a Tony award for the year's best revival of a play or musical. The other plays were revived Off-Broadway or in university or regional theaters. Critics reviewing the plays approached them as cultural artifacts, historicizing the productions and situating them as markers of a pivotal era in the nation's history and its narrative about race. In effect, the plays become a history lesson about the African American Freedom Struggle. But as they argued for the historical significance of the plays, they elided the representation of African American identity's complexities present in the play. In light of cultural memory's dialectic of remembering and forgetting in service of the narrative of the Freedom Struggle era, the coda urges a reconsideration of postblackness's literary genealogies.