Musical Louisiana

Since 2007 Musical Louisiana: America’s Cultural Heritage has been co-presented by the Historic New Orleans Collection and the Louisiana Philharmonic Orchestra. It was founded by HNOC’s late director of the Williams Research Center, Alfred E. Lemmon, as a free, educational concert for music lovers in New Orleans and throughout the state.

This year’s edition of Musical Louisiana concert presents the long-awaited world premiere of New Orleanian Edmond Dédé’s Morgiane (1887). This historic composition remains the earliest known surviving full-length opera written by a Black American composer. The concert will feature the Grammy Award–winning LPO, six acclaimed soloists—baritone Joshua Conyers, bass Kenneth Kellogg, tenor Chauncey Packer, sopranos Taylor J. White and Mary Elizabeth Williams, and bass-baritone Jonathan Woody—and OperaCréole’s principal singers and chorus under the baton of Washington, DC–based Opera Lafayette’s artistic director designate (and New Orleans native) Patrick Dupre Quigley. The production will draw selections from three acts of the opera.

“Morgiane is the most important piece of American music that no one has ever heard. . . . The American musical community has been deprived of this masterpiece for over 130 years; it is high time that Dédé and his music take their rightful place in the American musical canon.”

—Patrick Dupre Quigley, NBC Nightly News

HNOC will host a preconcert panel discussion at the Williams Research Center (410 Chartrest St) at 5 p.m.

This world premiere in New Orleans is co-presented by the Historic New Orleans Collection, OperaCréole, and the Louisiana Philharmonic Orchestra, courtesy of the production partnership between OperaCréole and DC–based Opera Lafayette, who collaborated to produce Edmond Dédé’s Morgiane.