A “Revolutionary Project”
Listening to History in Shirley Graham’s 1932 Opera Tom-Tom
by Lucy Caplan
Ten thousand spectators came on the first night; fifteen thousand more on the second. They filled the stadium on the lakefront, marveling at the multi-tiered stage, the elephant that lumbered across it, and the thirty-foot waterfall towering above. As the sun set, a light rain began to fall. Its rhythmic patter merged imperceptibly with the sounds emanating from a battalion of percussion instruments. Four soloists and a chorus of hundreds appeared. Their voices guided the audience out of the drizzly present – Cleveland, summer, 1932 – and into the sweeping epic of Tom-Tom, the world-premiere opera unfolding onstage.
