« Back to Margaret Garner main page

Margaret Garner: A Look Back
BY RICHARD DANIELPOUR

It’s hard to know what one has learned until a little time has passed since it was all so fresh and raw.

With my first opera, Margaret Garner, I realize now that I walked into so much without being fully cognizant of its consequence and significance. For instance, at first I did not realize the magnitude of the work — epic in terms of length (as long as Aida) and size (a Rosenkavalier-sized orchestra and double chorus), its subject matter weighty, ponderous, and demanding.

Toni Morrison and I knew that we were writing something that needed to be written, yet we had no idea of the scope of emotional reaction that this story was to elicit.

Much of this I learned in Detroit. Of the entire three years of watching Margaret Garner develop, the Detroit production meant the most to me. I stayed for all of the performances, making little adjustments and cuts, wanting to get as close as possible to a final edition. But the most remarkable thing of all was the reaction of the Detroit audiences.

After its racial tensions came to the forefront during the late 1960s, I came to regard Detroit as a city forever divided. Yet when the original production of Margaret Garner opened in Detroit on May 7, 2005, those who came to experience the performances demonstrated to me that perchance what I believed to be a permanent rupture was in fact showing signs of healing. The audience, comprised equally of whites and African Americans, laughed at the same moments, cried at the same moments. On those evenings at the Detroit Opera House, there was a coming together of the people of the city and a recognition that we were all part of the same human family.

As productions of Margaret Garner continued in other cities — Cincinnati, Philadelphia, Charlotte, New York — we found the same type of reaction.

After the Chicago performances this fall, Margaret Garner will have had about 35 performances in three-and-a-half years. That is unusual for a new work, especially a full-length opera.

While in Detroit from mid-April through May 22, 2005, I felt I was away from home for a long time. But I was bolstered by the people in the city of Detroit: total strangers, people on the board of directors, the opera-goers. Their warmth and openness, and the sense of camaraderie that I experienced gave me the strength and courage to move forward. I also owe much credit to David DiChiera, who had an attitude toward the project that said ‘this is going to be special; this is going to be a unique event in our history.’ And because he did that with such love and such care, I think people were attenuated to the possibility. Attending all of the performances, I noticed a number of people who were returning to see it a second or third time.

As I was writing Margaret Garner I started to understand that on some level this work was changing me. In general, I believe, artists have a tendency to be self-absorbed — myself included. But with Margaret Garner, I was more sensitized to the world. I became more aware of people than I had been. I can’t look upon a mother in the way I once did. I have a whole new respect for mothers, and motherhood. Part of this is because of my wife, Kathleen. We married a week after the show closed in Detroit. She has two boys from a previous marriage, and as I have watched her life as a mother, I have come to a greater understanding about Margaret, and about the divine union between mother and child.

Perhaps it’s not so much an understanding, but a sort of dancing around the periphery of it. Just the same, I now have a new appreciation for mothers — and the inner strength that is required to do the right thing.

I still believe that the essential underlying message in Margaret Garner is that all people matter, no exceptions.