The Well-Tempered Ear

Classical music: A long-lost American opera about Tabasco makes a fiery return to New Orleans. Are you burning to hear it?

By Jacob Stockinger

It seems it’s time to revise the history of American opera.

That is due to the recent rediscovery of a lost 1894 opera about Tabasco (below, in photo by Tim Grosscup for New Orleans Opera) – that famous Southern hot sauce – that sheds a new light on that history.

The musical score, which had been lost for more than a century, was rediscovered in 2009 and has now received a fiery revival in its natural home — New Orleans, which also happens to have the oldest opera company in the United States.

The music was written by the American composer George Whitefield Chadwick (below). You can hear the Overture to the “burlesque opera” in the YouTube video at the bottom.

The libretto’s plot focuses on an Irish traveler who gets lost at sea and ends up as a chef in Morocco where the famous hot sauce pleases the Pasha who has captured him and so saves the traveler’s fate.

The opera was premiered in Boston, then went for a run on Broadway and toured to dozens of cities.

Of course, one still wonders if the opera will receive performance elsewhere these days. But that is another question for another day.

In the meantime, here is a fine story, with a sound sample, from National Public Radio (NPR) about the opera and its historical and artistic significance.

https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2018/01/25/580713942/tabasco-opera-makes-fiery-return-in-new-orleans