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Alison Stewart: This is All Of It. I'm Alison Stewart live from the WNYC studios in Soho. Thank you for spending part of your day with us whether you're listening on the radio, live streaming or On Demand. I'm really grateful you're joining us today. On the show, Alex Borstein stars as the brash, hilarious Talent Agent Susie Myerson, and the hit show The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel. Borstein's new comedy special also just premiered and it's wild. She'll join me to discuss both projects, and she'll take your calls.

In honor of Poetry Month, our full bio book series where we have a continuing conversation about a deeply researched biography. It's about the Poet Phillis Wheatley, who was the first African American, the first enslaved person, and only the third Colonial Era woman to publish a book of poetry. We'll learn today how she actually got that book published. Plus a look at the life and work of another poet from yesteryear, Constantine Cavafy. An upcoming festival called Archive of Desire features artists like Rufus Wainwright, Nick Cave and Laurie Anderson providing their own adaptations of his work.

Festival curator, Paola Prestini, joins me to talk about it along with one of the participating artists, André Aciman, the author of the novel, Call Me by Your Name. That is our plan for today. Let's get this started with our friend Terrance McKnight.

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Today we kick off by talking about a new podcast from our colleagues at WQXR, Every Voice with Terrance McKnight. In its debut season, the series is exploring representations of Blackness in Opera. There are four operas being investigated The Magic Flute and its lead, Osman in The Abduction from Seraglio, I think I'm saying that right, and the titular characters in Othello and Aida. The series is chock full of interviews with performers and educators and presents historical documents and archival performance recordings. There are 16 episodes and episode 11 of every voice drops tomorrow, it's available wherever you listen to podcasts. WQXR's Terrance McKnight joins us now. Hi, Terrance.

Terrance McKnight: Hello, Alison.

Alison Stewart: You first conceived of Every Voice a couple of years ago, what was the catalyst?

Terrance McKnight: Oh my goodness. So much, I have done some documentaries for WQXR and for WNYC about music in the life of particular Americans, Martin Luther King Jr, Langston Hughes, Hazel Scott, Harry Belafonte, and others. We wanted to do some shorter-form documentaries if you will, or discussions about classical music and how it shows up in the Black community and how Black folk show up in classical music. This was an opportunity to have a conversation about just an art form that goes back to the 1600s and really intersects with the Atlantic slave heist. I really wanted to look at the music that grew out of that, that experience, and how it represented Black folks and how it's evolved over the past few centuries.

Alison Stewart: When you're thinking about Blackness in Opera, it's easy to understand what was missing about the conversation 50 years ago, but what's missing from the current conversation about Blackness in Opera?

Terrance McKnight: I think in this podcast, what we've been talking about, and what we've been interrogating is how opera was so influential, so important, and how it passed down these themes about Blackness that we live with today. Our paths down perceptions about Blackness that we see show up in the headlines. How it instilled in the minds of Europeans who Black folks were and how they were to be navigated and managed in society. I mean, when you think about opera, you think about the influencers, folks in power had access to this art form, they sponsored this art form.

Oftentimes, these fictionalized characters, when they showed up and they were Black, they fit the stereotypes of the day, and the code of the day, and the social construct, and the construct around how capitalism worked. It's just accepted now when we see an opera like Othello or Aida, but these were operas that were written to suit a certain program in society. I think that conversation goes undiscussed and it's just seen as entertainment, or the way it was or the way it is where, in fact, it was that way for a particular purpose.

Alison Stewart: We're talking about Every Voice with Terrence McKnight. The podcast drops there on Thursdays, episode 11 drops tomorrow, but I want to go back to episode 1. You and I have actually talked about this episode before, but it's really sets up the series in a beautiful way. The first four episodes actually, you talk about representations of, I hope I get this right, Monostatos and Mozart's The Magic Flute. For people who don't know, who is Monostatos, how does he fit into the narrative of The Magic Flute?

Terrance McKnight: Monostatos is the moor, he's the Black man. In the 19th century, when this opera was done, he was called the Negro. Mozart wrote this opera, wrote the music for the opera back in 1791, and it depicts a princess falling in love with a man. The princess has been imprisoned and Monostatos is the prison guard, he's supposed to be overseeing her. He wants connection, he wants family, he's an enslaved man, and he doesn't know love, and he doesn't have anyone on his side, and so becomes attracted to this princess. His boss, his master, and Monostatos is doing his job, and just to show his superiority he sends up Monostatos up to receive 79 lashes, just because he could.

Another thing that-- Now this is 1791 so slavery is alive and happening then. That wasn't something that was-- That was something that you would find in slave culture, in the slave codes that you could just do to your slave, whatever you want it to do. Another thing that shows up with Monostatos is there's music in the opera, and he's doing his job along with the other slaves, and they just get so caught up in the music, that they can't help themselves.

This idea of the Black man just dancing his troubles away is another trope that gets passed down to us to this day. Monostatos, you see some of these ideas about Blackness showing up in this opera, he is the comic relief, he is the buffoon, so his misery becomes the thing that is laughed at in this opera.

Alison Stewart: In the podcast, I want to play a clip from mezzo-soprano, Raehann Bryce-Davis, shared her first experience with The Magic Flute, let's listen to this clip from Every Voice with Terrence McKnight.

Raehann Bryce-Davis: The first time I ever encountered Magic Flute, it was in Texas. We had an opportunity that all the universities were all getting together to do one big show, and it was in English, and I didn't know anything about the opera at all. We had a sing-through, I had gone and just learned all my notes. I was sitting there happy like doo doo doo doo doo, and I remember hearing the character that it was singing Monostatos who was, of course, a white gentleman who was saying in English, "Because my skin is Black and ugly, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I'm Black. I'm ugly, blah"

I was just like, and as the only Black person in the room I looked around like, "Is everybody equally appalled?" [laughs] Everybody was just pleasantly smiling and looking down at their scores and there's nothing wrong here, and I was like, "What the fuck has happened?" [laughs] It was just this crazy disconnect from my reality and what was happening in this room. I didn't understand how I-- I had heard about The Magic Flute a million times, how is this not the thing that everybody knows about?

Alison Stewart: First of all, she has the best laugh ever. Her laugh is tremendous. To her point, how is this not the thing that everybody talks about?

Terrance McKnight: After Raehann's interview in the podcast, I follow that up with a poem that says, I say she has to laugh to keep from crying. That sort of thing that one does. How do you sit in that room and you look around your colleagues and nobody is appalled by that, but it's just accepted? That was the opera. That's the way it is. When I created a promo using those words, I had my daughter with me, and she's three years old, and I thought, "I can't use this promo because I don't want to hear those words strung together because my skin is Black and ugly.

I thought, Alison, how many children have seen this opera, have heard those words in so many different languages around the world? When Mozart produced this opera back in 1791, it was so popular there were 100 performances the first year. This opera has been performed around the world countless times. More recently, they've changed the words, "Because my skin is green or because sometimes they'll use the word because I'm a slave." Well, there's also connections with slavery in our mind and who fits that bill.

That's the kind of thing that we're interrogating with this series, is those things that just are seen as entertainment that just can almost go by without being unnoticed or without being noticed, but they have an impact on the way we think and the way we treat and deal with one another.

Alison Stewart: She also said something. She tossed it off. She said, "Of course, by a white man." Is this role usually played by a white man?

Terrance McKnight: Yes. It's been done at the Metropolitan Opera here in New York a number of times. I know there hasn't been a Black singer who has sung that role. Oftentimes, back in Mozart today, and certainly up until the early 1900s or the mid-1900s, or probably beyond, it was somebody in Blackface, but more recently, they're green or they're portrayed as something different in different parts of the world, but most oftentimes, it's someone representing Black culture.

Alison Stewart: Let's bring in the tenor, Rodell Rosel, into this conversation. How does he play into this conversation in the podcast?

Terrance McKnight: Well, Rodell, he's someone who does the role of Monostatos often and he understands it. He talked to us about this as being an outsider, being an Asian man, he's Filipino, and being a gay man and so he understands this idea of being an outsider like Monostatos was. He tries to bring some dignity to the role. He tries to bring some empathy into the role and tries to get his audience to see Monostatos for a fully-formed human being as opposed to just a buffoon. That's the way he goes into this role.

Alison Stewart: Let's take a listen to a clip from the podcast, Every Voice with Terrance McKnight of Grammy-nominated tenor, Rodell Rosel, talking about playing the role of Monostatos.

Rodell Rosel: I'm someone who is gay and Asian, so I'm already different, to begin with. I think it helps to connect with the character that way. For the longest time, I've always wished I was not what I am, but over the years growing up, learning more about how deep being a person of color is, then I realized, "Oh, I'm really glad that I am what I am because I have something to say. I have something to talk about." With this character, playing it, I'm able to put my own twist or my own interpretation of how do I make my character be the character that was written, but at the same time, connect with people. I think that's what I was able to do every time I come out.

Alison Stewart: Listening to several of the interviews in Every Voice, Terrance, it feels like some of these people you speak to, some of these artists have just been waiting for someone to ask them about this. They seem very willing and ready to talk about it.

Terrance McKnight: Yes, I think so. Another thing we've done with the show, Alison, is we've allowed these singers to go in character. Thomas Hampson came on as Iago from Othello and Angela Brown came on as Aida from Aida, and so they're actually going into character in their roles. That's been so much fun because according to them, this is something that they don't get to do often or at all. That's been a lot of fun delving into the operas that way also.

Alison Stewart: It is a lot of fun. Since you brought up Aida, in the podcast you talk about taking a friend to go see Aida. It's an opera about an Ethiopian princess who is enslaved in Egypt. What were her impressions of the show and why did you want to include them?

Terrance McKnight: Oh my goodness. It was a case where you want your friends to be a part of your life and to understand what it is you're doing so I took a friend to see Aida. We were in Atlanta and she was Somalian, so she was very familiar with East African culture. A lot of her friends were Eritreans and Ethiopians and so we went to Aida because I thought, "Oh, she'll be able to really relate to this." We get there and five minutes into the opera, she leans over and she says, "T, why are these Ethiopians Black but the Egyptians are white and the Ethiopians, they're slaves?" She said, "America, you all have to do this all the time?"

I just remember sinking down in my seat and thinking, "Here it is again. Here it is again. We have to see these same depictions over and over and over again, and even on the opera stage." We wanted to take on Aida and deal with that idea of race and colorism and try to understand the time that it was written. We've come up with some really interesting things about that period. 1871 is when the opera premiered and so that was right after the Suez Canal opened and it was right after the Civil War. Right after the Civil War, there was a cotton famine that happened in England, or during the Civil War, I should say, there was a blockade of all of this cotton.

America was producing 2 billion pounds of cotton every year, some crazy number, and England suffered with that blockade. Egypt, the Khedive of Egypt, the man who commissioned Verdi to write the opera, he jumped on the opportunity and cotton became an important export out of Egypt, so England turned to Egypt for its cotton. This man and a lot of Egyptians made a lot of money through the cotton industry and this helped him to build an opera house and to build roads and museums and libraries. He was really trying to make Egypt the Paris of Africa.

This idea of Aida, being this Ethiopian slave and the Egyptians representing more so of a Parisian or a European culture, this was in keeping with the social order of the day, and that's when Aida was created. We wanted to just look at that and really talk about that and help our listeners to understand the time that it was constructed and how some of those tropes have been passed down, which helps me to understand when I go to see it, why it is the way it is, but it begs the question. I understand that that's the way it was in the 19th century, but why do we still have to do it that way, especially when it doesn't really serve our democracy and our understanding of racial equality and equity?

Alison Stewart: My guest is Terrance McKnight. We're discussing his podcast, Every Voice with Terrance McKnight. After the break, we'll talk a little bit about Othello as well as Harry Belafonte. Terrance did another special. He mentioned a documentary about Belafonte, and we'll hear a little more about him after a quick break.

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You're listening to All Of It on WNYC. I'm Alison Stewart. My guest is Terrance McKnight. We're talking about his podcast, Every Voice with Terrance McKnight. This season, it's a debut, season of the podcast is examining Blackness in opera. We've arrived at Othello. Othello The Moor is a celebrated character, is a warrior. What was the perceptions of Moors when Verdi created Othello in 1887?

Terrance McKnight: Oh, wow. Verdi got the story from Shakespeare who wrote it for-- He started working for Queen Elizabeth I, and then he went on to work for King James. He presented this for the court of King James back in 1603, or something. That was right, as they were looking at, becoming really invested in the slave trade. Shakespeare write the story-- Well, Shakespeare got a story from. He adapted it. It had been done in Spain. Verdi took on this story in the 1880s. It was 20 years after emancipation in America, but it was right after this scramble for Africa, was during that period, that scramble for Africa, where European nations went in and they carved up the continent.

With emancipation in America, there was this idea that Black people, and Black men in particular, needed managing because they hadn't been free for a long time, so what are they going to do once they get freedom? Well, we want to protect our white women, and so we really have to manage these men, because if they're free, they're really animalistic, and they're brutes. We see Othello, someone who is a general in the army, and he takes this white wife whose father was a senator, and they're married, and he becomes very upset and angry, and he smothers her, and then he takes his own life.

Right after this house, and we see this in America, we see this idea come forward of the Black route. There were all these magazines and movies that started coming out depicting Black men as being animalistic, and really chasing after white women. Verdi's timing of this, again, it suited a political and social agenda. That's what we talk about, but we also uncover something that I think is beautiful. We uncovered it because Toni Morrison and Peter Sellars dealt with this. This is the idea that Othello really becomes upset over a handkerchief. We often think of it as this man was just outrageous.

He lost his mind over a handkerchief, but what Toni Morrison discovered in her play about Othello's wife, Desdemona, was that in Shakespeare's day, Moors, and in England, in order to dye something Black, this cloth had to be mummified. This idea of a Black handkerchief was something that was connected to, Othello's heritage. Moors in Shakespeare's day, in order to stay in Europe, they had to convert to Christianity, because the Muslims were kicked out. The idea is that Othello converted to Christianity, join the army, and he had to distance himself from his own culture, but one aspect of his culture that he kept, and he kept between he and his wife was this Black handkerchief.

We also discovered that his wife had been raised by an African woman. While her parents were off in the government, she was raised by this African woman who taught her songs and taught her about her African culture. When she encounters Othello, it's almost like she's encountering a piece of herself through the way she was raised around this African woman, so they connected over his African heritage and her proximity to African heritage. That's something that Toni Morrison talks about, and it's something that we dig into in our discussion of Othello, which just brings a little more humanity to Othello.

Paul Robeson played Othello because he wanted to bring more dignity to the role, to the character, and not just have Othello be seen as this angry, vile man who just takes the life of his wife. In this podcast, in the series, through our discussions of these operas, I've been asked, "Are you trying to eliminate these stories?" Well, we're just trying to illuminate parts of the story stories that bring a little more dignity to Blackness. It uplifts the whole community when we do that.

Alison Stewart: Terrance, before we let you go, you hosted a WQXR special titled Making Belafonte. Of course, Harry Belafonte passed away, activist, amazing, entertainer, just a legend, and it's very sweet in the beginning of the series. You seem very nervous and are really truly excited about getting to interview Harry Belafonte. Why was that such a meaningful experience for you?

Terrance McKnight: My goodness, Belafonte has been-- When I was growing up, my parents didn't allow me to watch a lot of television, but if Belafonte or Poitier were on television, it's something that my sister, brothers, and I could sit around and watch. I just remember him growing up. When I got to college, and I got to Morehouse, I understood the importance he had in Dr. King's life. Dr. King was so important to the college.

I just had a lot of respect for Mr. Belafonte, all of my life, and then when I got a call to curate an exhibit at MoMA, around the art of Charles White, he explained that Charles White was a good friend of Harry Belafonte and Charles did a lot of the work for Belafonte's albums, and Belafonte supported his career. That's what led me to his place to have a conversation with him. I'm bringing in all of this admiration to Mr. Belafonte. When I got there, I just felt like I was 10 years old all over again.

Alison Stewart: [chuckles] Actually, I pulled that clip because it's just so sweet. Let's take a listen.

Terrance McKnight: We went upstairs and waited at the door for a couple of minutes. After the door was answered, we sat in his living room. After about five minutes, he appeared with his Halo and the interviewer, if you hear that interview, Man, I really sound like I'm 13 years old. Now, I remember you saying, you didn't say to me, but you said that when you first started singing, you felt like you were an actor who was acting like a singer.

Harry Belafonte: Well, I was.

Terrance McKnight: [laughs]

Terrance McKnight: I was because I often said that I was an actor who became a singer, not a single became an actor.

MUSIC - Harry-Belafonte: In That Great Gettin Up Mornin

There's a better day a coming, fare thee well, fare thee well

yes, there's a better day a coming, fare thee well, fare thee well

Harry Belafonte: In the song, I found that these songs are as much as a play, so let's find songs that'll say something.

MUSIC - Harry-Belafonte: In That Great Gettin Up Mornin

fare thee well, fare thee well

In that great gettin' up morning, fare thee well, fare thee well

In that great gettin' up morning, fare thee well, fare thee well

Oh Preacher fold your bible, fare thee well, fare thee well

Alison Stewart: Terrance, as people are reading all of these tributes to Harry Belafonte, what's one thing you'd like them to think about as they're reading them?

Terrance McKnight: That man had conviction for humanity. He was willing to stand up with a microphone and to talk about it, but his talk, I think was based on listening. I'm sitting in Belafonte's place and have been in his presence a few times, but he knew so much, Alison, I think because he listened so well. He just seemed to be able to process information and speak about what he processed in a way that made so much sense, and that was so bare. That was so courageous. He just had a lot of courage. When I started this podcast, I went around the room and asked my team, I said, if there was one person who had to call you and say, "I heard your work in this podcast, and I love what you're doing, who would that person be?" I said, "I'm going to start." I said, "For me, it's Harry," because I just respected his work so much and his commitment to humanity.

Alison Stewart: Terrance McKnight is the host of Every Voice with Terrance McKnight. Episode 11 comes out tomorrow. Terrance, thank you so much for being with us.

Terrance McKnight: Oh, thank you so much, Alison, anytime.

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