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The title of this chapter, ‘Indigenization and History: How opera in South Africa became South African opera’, seems to imply that the process of opera indigenization in the country has been completed to a degree. More so, it seems to assume that this process has unfolded linearly and incrementally over time. The present writer does not support these claims, but worked within the constraints of these assumptions and implications as minimum conditions for constructing a historical narrative that is thematically focused. Indeed the aim of this chapter was not to write a history of opera in South Africa per se – for this more intensive scrutiny of primary sources and a more expansive narrative would be imperative – but to explore the establishment of opera in South Africa since it first occurred in 1801 and to trace the presentation of the genre in secondary literature as

influenced by the circumstances, people and institutions involved with opera performance. The notion of indigenization carries with it expectations of historical embeddedness, of time having passed and rituals and practices having had time to become sedimented and layered in new contexts. This chapter acknowledges that any discourse of indigenization, regardless of its underlying ideological premises, depends on a historical narrative. For a variety of reasons, comprehensive and compelling historical narratives of important themes and topics in South African music history are exceptional. For one thing, South African music scholarship across a broad spectrum has historically lacked the institutional or human recourses to attempt the construction of such comprehensive histories. The historical narrative constructed here is also driven less by the need for history, than the

desire to understand how an imported cultural phenomenon in a colonial society – in this case opera – changed and adapted (indigenized) by existing for an extended period in its adopted country. It stands recorded in this chapter how opera functioned as an expression of white settler culture and later of Afrikaner nationalist arrogance. All these uses,

however politically compromised in the present, played a role in establishing a position for opera in South African society. Thus the translation of opera into Afrikaans and the effects of the cultural boycott emerge historically as important moments of indigenization in the interpretations of standard works from the canon. Whereas later chapters consider indigenization structurally (Chapters 2 and 4) or aesthetically (Chapter 3), this chapter constructs a frame of events, institutions, people and works that contextualize historically how opera was understood and how it functioned as a practice in the other chapters in this dissertation.

The sources consulted to construct this chapter have without exception been written by white South Africans of whom many were Afrikaners who worked in the academic or media structures created by Apartheid. Their contributions to the written history of opera in South Africa entertain conventional ideas about what opera is and are ideologically embedded in the politics of exclusion and exclusivity. With few exceptions, all sources that were consulted for the writing of this chapter were written after 1960, a time in South Africa’s history when institutions of learning as well as the media actively and consciously (as well as unconsciously) promoted the value of Western classical music as separate and superior to indigenous African culture. For South Africa’s government and many

individuals who worked in its ranks, opera symbolized the ideology of European artistic superiority. This attitude is often evident in the tone and style of the writing and on investigating the institutional positions held by these authors, a pattern emerges. The academics quoted in this chapter most frequently are Jan Bouws, Jacques Philip Malan, George Jackson and Pieter Kapp. Bouws, Malan and Kapp worked at Afrikaans

institutions that actively supported the idea of Apartheid and the superiority of European cultural manifestations.248 Other frequently quoted sources include work by media

248 _{Bouws and Kapp were both employed at the University of Stellenbosch. However, Kapp’s} article was written for the Akadmie vir Wetenskap en Kuns, an organization historically affiliated with the ideals of Afrikaner nationalism. Malan worked for the Human Sciences Research Council and was editor of the now (in)famous South African Music Encyclopedia, an academic endeavour which was fully funded by the Apartheid government.

personalities such as Julius Eichbaum249 and radio broadcasters who enjoyed life-long careers with the South African Broadcasting Corporation. The role played by the latter in the advocacy and preservation of Apartheid thinking on cultural matters is a matter of historical record. Reading (and listening to) these sources, the consistently Euro-centered approach of these media sources towards local opera production can be singled out as its most dominant characteristic.

The nationalist agenda of much writing on opera production and the promotion of opera and opera singers as so-called national assets during the Apartheid years cannot go

unnoticed. The portrayal, for instance, of the country’s best known operatic stars like Mimi Coertse, Gé Korsten and Cecilia Wessels in many a book or Scenario article as doing the country proud during a time of intense cultural isolation is conspicuous. The titles of biographies on Mimi Coertse (Onse Mimi [Our Mimi]) and Cecilia Wessels (Stem en Legende [Voice and Legend]) respectively, clearly illustrate the politically potent nature of South African operatic discourse.

It is important to note that the way in which opera as an art form has been discursively represented in these sources has partially dictated the way the history of opera in South Africa is represented here. The most important effect of this representation is that the current narrative is primarily ‘work centered’. It reads in the manner of a narrated list of works, emphasizing the all-too-familiar hierarchical order of ‘work’ and ‘composer’ presiding over a structure that upholds these aspects of music production as the most important for the historiographer, whilst singers, directors, teachers, artists, scholars and the opera-going public occupy successively lower ranks of importance. A history of South African opera unbeholden to this hierarchy would almost certainly be different from the one presented here. Chapter 2 of this dissertation could be read as an example of a history that de-emphasizes composers and works in favour of considerations of the influence of opera production on the lives of singers and production staff in a pertinent political context. It functions, I would argue, both a corrective to the current historical

249 _{Eichbaum was editor of the arts and culture magazine Scenario for 22 years. It is interesting to} note that although Eichbaum was an outspoken critic of the Apartheid government, his magazine Scenario lost ground after 1994 and completely disappeared by 1998. The content of the last editions of the magazine in 1998 were almost exclusively focused on classical music activities in Europe and not on the production of classical music in South Africa.

representation and as an intimation of how this narrative representation can and should change as more primary research is conducted.

It is clear that this chapter provides little insight into how ‘the idea of opera’ developed, evolved or integrated into South African musical life. This dimension of indigenization is, at least with regard to the Western Cape, more actively pursued in the chapters that follow. What this chapter does make clear is how opera in South Africa was influenced by the political and economic history of the country. The chronological historical structure of this chapter also complements the understanding of indigenization as a process, anticipating the problems that will be probed later on in this dissertation in efforts to arrive at concrete aesthetic descriptions of indigenization (Chapter 3) or strategic structural attempts to ‘transform’ opera into an indigenous art form (Chapter 4). As such, this chapter also points to the limitations of the use of the term ‘indigenization’.

Finally, the history constructed here from a wide range of secondary sources not only attempts to show how opera ‘found its place’ in local culture and local circumstances, but also how local culture responded to opera as a form of art. Although the former is perhaps more central to the narrative told here, the implicit aspects of reception that are part of this narrative receive more prominence in the chapters that follow.