Minnesota Opera presents first mainstage production by Black composer

This week, the Minnesota Opera opens its production of “The Anonymous Lover,” by French classical composer Joseph Bologne, Chevalier de Saint-Georges. It’s the company’s first presentation of a Black composer on the main stage.

A virtuoso violinist, conductor, composer, and champion fencer, Bologne was revered in his day, but in subsequent centuries his work was all but forgotten.

“Part of why we don’t know his music today, is systems of racism,” said Lee Bynum, Minnesota Opera’s vice president of impact. “Despite all of his accomplishments, there were a lot of folks in his time who did (not) want to see him in certain kinds of roles, and that was articulated then as being based on his race. So eventually, his work was just lost.”

Bynum was hired in 2020 in a role focused on equity, diversity and inclusion with the opera. He also works with community engagement, accessibility and education.

Presenting Bologne’s work, according to Bynum, is part of a vision to present more diverse stories at the opera.

“It’s a regular experience that if we’re seeing Black or Latinx, or Indigenous or Asian stories on stage, they focus on the suffering of the characters in them,” Bynum said. “And the ‘Anonymous Lover’ is almost a radical departure from this. I look at this as a reminder that there are creators of color who haven’t been accorded the same opportunities to reflect a multiplicity of experiences on stage.”

Bologne was born in 1745 on the island of Guadeloupe, to an enslaved Senegalese woman who was a servant to the wife of Bologne’s father, a plantation owner. At the age of seven, his father sent Bologne to France for his education, moving there himself with Bologne’s mother two years later. Bologne flourished in school, and became a prize-winning horse rider.

As an illegitimate son born a slave, Bologne didn’t inherit his father’s titles, but earned the title of “Chevalier” through his skills as an equestrian.

“He was able through his own efforts to go out and reposition himself,” Bynum said. Also a virtuoso violinist, Bologne would eventually become a sensation as a soloist. He’d go on to compose string quartets, violin concertos, symphonies, operas and “symphonies concertantes.”

Bologne wrote six operas, but only “The Anonymous Lover” survives. It’s a comedy of manners that follows a young woman with a suitor whom she does not know. They exchange letters, with the woman seeking to discover who her “anonymous lover” is over the course of the story.

“It was the equivalent of an 18th century rom com,” said Bynum. The Minnesota Opera’s version, directed by Maria Todaro, is set in Guadalupe.

The music, like Bologne’s other works, is “fantastic,” said the opera’s vice president, noting that Bologne was quite influential quite influential in his lifetime.

“He was really a superstar in kind of the model of Beyoncé,” Bynum said. He also piqued the interest of Marie Antoinette and became her music teacher. “She was a huge fan of his. She’d travel to see him perform.” Eventually, Bologne would become the queen’s court musician, prior to the French Revolution.

Bologne is often called “The Black Mozart,” but that’s a bit of a misnomer according to Bynum. They were writing in the same musical period, so one certainly can see similarities, such as with their chord progressions and orientations. But Bologne was actually older than Mozart, and there’s some evidence in the historical record that they may have spent some time together, and Mozart may have even been offered instruction by the older composer.

“Mozart, like other composers of the period, would have been very familiar with his music,” Bynum said. “He’s very, very famous, very, very well respected. So there would have been some efforts to emulate it in the same way that singers who grew up in the generation after Mariah Carey have all attempted to sound like her.”

Instead of Bologne being “the Black Mozart,” Bynum believes  it may be more appropriate to say Mozart was “The Black Chevalier.”

“The Anonymous Lover” ($25-225) performs 7:30 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 5, and then 7:30 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 10 and Saturday, Feb. 12, with a final performance at 2 p.m. Feb. 13 at the Ordway Music Theater, 345 Washington St., St. Paul. More information here.