Music: Deep River

“A native opera in jazz, the music to be by W. Franke Harling, the words by Laurence Stallings, an original form, original context . . . .” so sketchily have run the announcements of Deep River (TIME, Feb. 1). But people, knowing the achievements of these men, have dared to predict more—a big, real work essentially American . . . opera revolutionized . . . jazz dignified, established. Was not this the Laurence Stallings of What Price Glory? of The Big Parade? Was not this the Franke Harling of A Light from St. Agnes given last winter (TIME, Jan. 4) by the Chicago Civic Opera Co., to his everlasting glory, a composer in whose background the most academic classicism had rubbed elbows with the janglings of Tin Pan Alley?* What limits could there be to the possibilities of Deep River? Last week came the answer when, after a preliminary showing in Lancaster, Pa., it opened in Philadelphia.

Stalling’s Share. The scene is New Orleans in 1830—Creole days when gentlemen worthy of the name kept two establishments, one for the white women lawfully theirs, another for quadroons who found their favor. One M. Brusard, proudest of all Creoles, is betrayed by his mistress, seeks another, finds Mugette, lovely, desirable, almost white. Strangers happen by Kentuckians, staggering drunk but thirsty still for liquor and for women like their own to be their slaves. Pistol shots; and one intruder is dead, the other enamored of Mugette. A voodoo scene, and Mugette begs a charm to win her lover, follows her most savage instincts until, despairingly, she turns to God. The wrath of the devil-worshipers and then — the Quadroon Ball, graceful, gay at first, then bloody, riotous. M. Brusard and the lover from over the mountains are killed. Only Mugette is left, loverless, as completely, as inevitably alone as only her racial impurity could make her. So did Laurence Stallings conceive his share of Deep River,† told it sharply, brutally, profanely as would become a dramatist strange to the gentler art of libretting.

Harling’s Share. “Not jazz at all,” some said but they were the ones whose senses were too dull to catch the relentless one-two-three-four beat that pulsed its way through the second act. They had looked for trick instruments, screeches, yowlings, offensive percussives, and there was none of that. But even the untutored ones felt instinctively that then they were hearing the best music of the piece. The first and last acts are mostly dialogue sprinkled here and there with an aria of the light opera type, pretty, trite, unsuitable to snorting drama. The second act is different, written for no lovelorn gentlefolk, but for a great primitive mass, sung by them, savagely, hauntingly, throbbingly, masterfully done.

Comment. Critics were wary, called it an interesting effort to “solve the age-old problem of reconciling music and drama in the theatre,” commended Composer Harling for his mighty second act, deplored the fact that it was so much too big for the two acts that framed it, wondered if the same audience would be able to delight in the many heterogeneous parts.

*Broadway sweat shop where jazz tunes are manufactured wholesale.

†The scene of Franke Harling’s other melodramatic opera, The Light from St. Agnes, was likewise laid in Louisiana. There was a passionate mistress, Toinette. There were likewise drunks, although not Kentuckians. And the tale was likewise told sharply, brutally, profanely.