Dead Man Talking
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This would not be grist for The Marketplace of Revolution: How Consumer Politics Shaped American Independence (finally coming out next year), but Breen was hooked. “I spent a lot of time tracking down the proper nouns of the document,” he says. “And they came out pretty well. By the end of my research I felt you could trust at least the structure of the story.” Breen, who’d already coauthored Myne Owne Ground, a book on America’s first free black community, says Arthur was an irresistible character. Born to a slave in the town of Taunton, Massachusetts, in 1747, and likely fathered by her master (which made him unpopular with the mistress), he was a high-spirited kid who ran away whenever he could, stole whatever he needed, and delighted in outwitting his captors. According to his confession, marked by a suspiciously photographic recall of a long list of petty thefts (a goose, for example, then a kettle to boil it in), he was 18 years old when “the Devil put it into my Head to pay a Visit to the Widow Deborah Metcalfe, whom I in most inhumane manner ravished.” Says Breen: “I’m reading between the lines here, but my guess is they had consensual sex. He stops at her house and one thing leads to another. They have a bottle of rum, and they have each other. The next morning she appears at his master’s door saying, ‘I’ve been raped.’”
Breen was incredulous, but the stranger was composer T.J. Anderson, who already had a chamber opera based on the life of black activist David Walker among his credits. Anderson recruited Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Yusef Komunyakaa as his librettist. Northwestern found private support for the project, eventually titled Slip Knot, and Anderson and Komunyakaa have worked on it over the last seven years with the help of NU Opera artistic director Rhoda Levine. A few scenes got a trial run at last year’s Chicago Humanities Festival, but it’ll have its first nearly complete outing in a workshop performance featuring baritone Eric McKeever as Arthur at 7:30 PM on April 26 in Levere Memorial Temple, 1856 Sheridan Road in Evanston. At 2 PM that day, Anderson, Komunyakaa, Levine, and Breen will talk about channeling Arthur–from coerced confession to history paper to opera–at Northwestern’s music administration building, 711 Elgin Road in Evanston. Anderson and Komunyakaa have taken a few liberties with the story, Breen says, but it already had the classic operatic elements: “sex, violence, betrayal, and humor.”
Short Cuts
Cook County Hospital: “We may be able to pull this one out of the fire.” –Landmarks Preservation Council president David Bahlman
The first Mayor Daley on the subject of aldermanic pay: “What do they need a raise for? They’ve got zoning.” –Preservation Chicago president Jonathan Fine
