¹ O'Neill, Eugene, The Emperor Jones, Anna Christie, The Hairy Ape (New York, 1972), 46. All subsequent citations are to this edition.Google Scholar

² Another important adaptation is the 1956 ballet featuring music by Heitor Villa-Lobos and choreography by José Limón, who also danced the tide role.Google Scholar

³ Gruenberg, Louis, The Emperor Jones (New York, 1932).Google Scholar

⁴ This study will not discuss the reception of the play in the white or black communities. Needless to say, O'Neill's work proved controversial and had detractors in both groups. Many African–American critics attacked the work for perpetuating stereotypes, particularly that of the brutish black male. Black audiences were no less forgiving: Langston Hughes, for instance, recalled that a Harlem performance of the work was ridiculed. To Jones's rushing through the ‘primitive’ jungle, the audience responded: ‘Why don't you come on out o' that jungle – back to Harlem where you belong?’ Hughes, , The Big Sea (New York, 1940), 258–9.Google Scholar

⁵ A discussion of the genesis and original production of the opera can be found in Nisbett, Robert F., ‘Louis Gruenberg: His Life and Work’, Ph.D. diss. (Ohio State University, 1979), 42–9.Google Scholar

⁶ Quoted in Nisbett, ‘Gruenberg’, 44.Google Scholar

⁷ In the two decades following the 1934/5 season, the opera received sporadic performances. After a 1951 performance, the work lay dormant until the Michigan Opera Theatre revived it in February 1979. For a performance history of the opera, see Gruenberg's, Irma contribution to Margaret Loftus Ranald, The Eugene O'Neill Companion (Westport, Conn., and London, 1984), 745–6.Google Scholar

⁸ For such nationalistic praises, see Downes, Olin, ‘“The Emperor Jones” Triumphs as Opera’, New York Times, 8 01 1933, sec. 1, p. 1Google Scholar and ‘O'Neill into Opera’, Time, 16 01 1933, 20.Google Scholar

⁹ Gruenberg, Louis, ‘For an American Gesture’, Modern Music, 1 (06 1924), 27.Google Scholar

¹⁰ For a discussion of Gruenberg's compositional integration of African–American materials, see Nisbett, , ‘Gruenberg’ and ‘Louis Gruenberg's American Idiom’, American Music, 3 (1985), 25–41.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

¹¹ Gruenberg, Louis, ‘Jazz as a Starting Point’, The Musical Leader, 29 (28 05 1925), 594–5;Google Scholar‘Vom Jazz und andern Dingen: Rückblick und Ausblick’, in 25 Jahre Neue Musik: Jahrbuch 1926 der Universal-Edition, ed. Heinsheimer, Hans and Stefan, Paul (Vienna, 1926), 229–36.Google Scholar Preface, Negro Spirituals (Vienna, 1926).Google Scholar

¹² Taruskin, Richard, ‘“Nationalism”: Colonialism in Disguise?’ New York Times, 22 08 1993, sec. 2, p. 24.Google Scholar

¹³ Gruenberg, , ‘Jazz as a Starting Point’, 594.Google Scholar

¹⁴ Gruenberg, , ‘Jazz as a Starting Point’, 594–5.Google Scholar

¹⁵ Gruenberg, , ‘Jazz as a Starting Point’, 594–5, and ‘Vom Jazz und andern Dingen’, 232.Google Scholar

¹⁶ For discussions of racial representations in The Emperor Jones and other O''Neill plays, see Gillet, Peter J., ‘O'Neill and the Racial Myths’, in Eugene O'Neill: A Collection of Criticism, ed. Griffin, Ernest G. (New York, 1976), 45–58;Google ScholarShaughnessy, Edward P., ‘Eugene O'Neill: The Development of the Negro Portraiture’, MELUS, 11 (1984), 87–91;CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Cooley, John, ‘In Pursuit of the Primitive: Black Portraits by Eugene O'Neill and Other Village Bohemians’, in The Harlem Renaissance Re-Examined, ed. Kramer, Victor A. (New York, 1987), 51–64.Google Scholar

¹⁷ O'Neill dictates: ‘It [a tom-tom] starts at a rate exacdy corresponding to normal pulse-beat – 72 to the minute – and continues at a gradually accelerating rate from this point uninterruptedly to the very end of the play’ (20).Google Scholar

¹⁸ Dyer, Richard discusses this in his study of representations of whiteness in ‘White’, Screen, 29, no. 4 (1988), 55–6.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

¹⁹ This discussion of the authoratative invisibility of whiteness draws upon Dyer, ‘White’, 44–9.Google Scholar

²⁰ This line appears in the play, where it refers specifically to Jones's death by silver bullets. Gruenberg, though, only cites the ‘style’ and not the bullets. Moreover, he omits the final line of the play: ‘Stupid as 'ogs, the lot of 'em! Blarsted niggers!’ (53).Google Scholar

²¹ For a discussion of Jones's linguistic liminality and the interest of the writers Susan Glaspell and Djuna Barnes in this marginal character, see Larabee, Ann E., ‘“Meeting the Outside Face to Face”: Susan Glaspell, Djuna Barnes, and O'Neill's The Emperor Jones’, in Modem American Drama: The Female Connection, ed. Schlueter, June (Rutherford, NJ, 1990), 77–85.Google Scholar

²² Gilman, Lawrence, ‘“Emperor Jones” as Opera Fills The Metropolitan at Premiere’, New York Herald-Tribune, 8 01 1933, p. 1.Google Scholar

²³ Gruenberg, , Preface, Negro Sprirituals.Google Scholar

²⁴ This religious ambiguity particularly shapes the film version of the drama, in which the tribal ceremony of the opening shot dissolves into a southern black church scene. Perhaps taking a cue from the earlier opera, the film features Robeson singing a spiritual (‘Didn't My Lord Deliver Daniel’) during the jungle escape.Google Scholar

²⁵ The score does feature syncopated patterns but does not incorporate African–American idioms to the same degree as some of Gruenberg's other works, nor does it have as clear a ‘jazz sound’ as those compositions.Google Scholar

²⁶ Whereas Gruenberg's score resists the liminal position in the racial design of the drama, it can be heard as conforming with the representation of whiteness as a background. As many critics remarked, the score largely maintains a subservient position to O'Neill's dialogue, often providing slight underpinnings or brief interjections between vocal phrases. W. J. Henderson, in fact, referred to it as a ‘background’. His description is especially apt: given Gruenberg's investment in the racial representations of the drama, the only place for his music was the unobtrusive white ‘background’.Google Scholar

²⁷ Pounding drums play a similar role in Cornel Wilde's 1966 film The Naked Prey. As in The Emperor Jones, drums accompany a chase; however, Wilde's is inmany ways the ‘white version’ of the play and opera. The film centres on the hunt by African tribesmen of a white guide who, unlike Jones, runs towards civilisation (an army fort) and puts on clothes (shoes and a loincloth) during the pursuit.Google Scholar

²⁸ Kramer, A. Walter, ‘Emperor Jones, in Opera Guise, Has World Premiere’, Musical America, 53 (10 01 1933), 1, 20.Google Scholar

²⁹ Gruenberg was aware of this possible confusion and offered an unrealised solution: ‘I shall try to get moving pictures of Jones's hallucinations instead of actual players, I find that actual actors muddle up the clearness’. Quoted in Nisbett, ‘Gruenberg’, 43. In the film version, Murphey avoided the problem by superimposing small shots of the hallucinations in the main frame.Google Scholar

³⁰ In his libretto, Gruenberg directed that the chorus be placed in the orchestra pit and emerge slowly.Google Scholar

³¹ JanMohamed, Abdul R., ‘The Economy of Manichean Allegory: The Function of Racial Difference in Colonialist Literature’, in “Race,” Writing and Difference, ed. Gates, Henry Louis Jr (Chicago, 1986), 90.Google Scholar

³² Conrad, Joseph, Heart of Darkness, ed. Kimbrough, Robert (New York and London, 1971), 36.Google Scholar

³³ Kramer, , ‘Emperor Jones, in Opera Guise’, 5. Nisbett considers the suicide an act of heroic resistance; Nisbett, ‘Gruenberg’, 225.Google Scholar

³⁴ Gilman also viewed Jones's suicide as ‘an atavistic sacrifice’. Gilman, ‘“Emperor Jones” as Opera’, 19.Google Scholar

³⁵ Gruenberg, , ‘Jazz as a Starting Point’, 594.Google Scholar

³⁶ Gruenberg directs that ‘four almost naked negroes with drums suspended round their necks’ perform in the concluding war dance. It is unclear if these drums were intended to materialise the backstage instruments, which, according to the play, should be silent after Jones's death.Google Scholar

³⁷ Bhabha, Homi K., ‘The Other Question: The Stereotype and Colonial Discourse’, Screen, 24, no. 6 (1983), 26–36.Google Scholar

³⁸ Bhabha, , ‘The Other Question’, 26–7.Google Scholar For Freud's views of fetishism, see Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality, ed. and trans. Strachey, James (New York, 1962), 19–21,Google Scholar and ‘Fetishism’ in The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, ed. and trans. Strachey, James (London, 1961), XXI, 149–57.Google Scholar

³⁹ Kobena Mercer's application of fetishism to racial and male homoerotic contexts has been especially helpful in approaching Gruenberg's opera; see ‘Skin Head Sex Thing: Racial Difference and the Homoerotic Imaginary’, in How Do I Look? Queer Film and Video, ed. Object-Choices, Bad (Seattle, 1991), 169–210,Google Scholar and ‘Reading Racial Fetishism’, in Fetishism as Cultural Discourse, ed. Apter, Emily and Pietz, William (Ithaca, 1993), 307–29. In a recent study on cinematic blackface, Michael Rogin has related blackface and fetishism;Google Scholar see Rogin, , ’ “Democracy and Burnt Cork”: The End of Blackface, the Beginning of Civil Rights’, Representations, 46 (1994), 8–9.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁴⁰ Lott, Eric, Love and Theft. Blackface Minstrelsy and the American Working Class (New York and Oxford, 1993), 53–5, 120–2, 161–8.Google Scholar

⁴¹ ‘O'Neill into Opera’, Time, 20.Google Scholar

⁴² Tibbett had already donned blackface for the role of Jonny in two performances of the Metropolitan Opera production of Ernst Krenek's Jonny spielt auf(27 02 February and 4 April 1929).Google Scholar

⁴³ Tibbett, Lawrence, ‘Opera Can Be Saved by the Movies’, Pictorial Review (02 1933), 8–9, 69;Google Scholar excerpted in Lawrence Tibbett Singing Actor, ed. Farkas, Andrew (Portland, 1989), 105.Google Scholar

⁴⁴ Thompson, , ‘Success Attends “The Emperor Jones” ‘, 6 and Downes, ‘“The Emperor Jones” Triumphs as Opera’, 26.Google Scholar

⁴⁵ ‘O'Neill into Opera’, Time, 20.Google ScholarLiebling, Leonard, ‘Emperor Jones, New American Opera, Given Its Premiere Performance at Metropolitan’, Musical Courier, 106 (14 01 1933), 13.Google Scholar

⁴⁶ ‘O'Neill into Opera’, Time, 20.Google Scholar

⁴⁷ ‘O'Neill into Opera’, Time, 20; Liebling, ‘Emperor Jones’, 13; Henderson, ‘“Emperor Jones” Has Premiere’, 25; and Downes, ‘“The Emperor Jones” Triumphs as Opera’, 26.Google Scholar

⁴⁸ Mercer also mentions this image in his comments on the shine of black skin in Robert Mapplethorpe's photographs. Mercer, ‘Reading Racial Fetishism’, 315–18.Google Scholar

⁴⁹ Thompson, , ‘Success Attends “The Emperor Jones”‘, 6 and Downes, ‘“The Emperor Jones” Triumphs as Opera’, 26.Google Scholar

⁵⁰ Kramer, , ‘Emperor Jones, in Opera Guise’, 5.Google Scholar

⁵¹ This statement is offered as a rhetorical play on Kramer's comments. The racist policies of the Metropolitan obviously led to the casting of Tibbett.Google Scholar

⁵² Kramer and the other critics also fail to mention the incongruity of having a white singer (Pearl Besuner) play the small role of the ‘old native woman’ in the opening scene.Google Scholar

⁵³ A similar photograph can be found in the New York Herald-Tribune review.Google Scholar

⁵⁴ ‘O'Neill into Opera’, Time, 20.Google Scholar

⁵⁵ This recording is of a shortened version of the work and was broadcast on The Packard Hour on 16 October 1934. The Pearl label has included the conclusion of that recording on its collection entitled “The Emperor Tibbett’ (GEMM CDS 9452).Google Scholar

⁵⁶ As seen in the film version, Paul Robeson also relied on these two gestures. Indeed, there was no escaping them, as they are built into a role that fixates on both the ‘comedy’ of a black emperor and the ‘lure’ of the black body. Moreover, these qualities are enhanced by the mise-en-scène and camera work. As Richard Dyer points out in his discussion of Robeson's film career, though, the actor, through his presence and performance, could ‘work against the grain’ of such white media productions, infusing them with meanings and images appreciated by black audiences. Such subversion can be heard in the spiritual episode: in Robeson's robust, heartfelt performance, the spiritual remains partly outside of the primitivist narrative of the drama, whereas, in Tibbett's performance, it is complicit in that narrative. Dyer, , Heavenly Bodies: Film Stars and Society (New York, 1986), 67–139.Google Scholar