Arias, Communists, and Conspiracies: The History of Still's Troubled Island

Abstract

On the evening of 31 March 1949, William Grant Still's first opera, Troubled Island, premiered in New York. It was the first performance by a major opera company of an opera by an African American composer. Based on a libretto by Langston Hughes, Troubled Island was greeted with a standing ovation by the first-night audience. However, success would prove to be short lived for Still and Hughes. Although the audience was enthusiastic, reviews over the next few days struck the composer and his associates as cold and unforgiving; at best they could be described as mixed. On 1 May 1949, after three performances, Troubled Island closed permanently. Thus began Troubled Island's troubled history. Still's wife, Verna Arvey, and possibly even Still himself, believed that the negative reviews resulted from a conspiracy among the New York critics to thwart the success of an African American composer. In addition, Still raised the possibility that cold-war politics had affected some aspects of the opera's reception. In this article I will discuss the history and reception of the opera in relation to these issues.