New School New Books 2025

I discuss musical dramaturgy in opera as practiced by three American non-White composers: myself, Anthony Davis, and Huang Ruo. I focus on how we approach works featuring characters and scenarios from our own cultures. As non-White creators, our cultures have historically constituted a musical Other, which has typically been characterized by musical choices that emphasize the Other. Drawing on my own compositional process and personal interviews conducted with Davis and Huang, I argue that our dramaturgical approaches do not come from assuming Otherness as the basis for musical dramaturgy but embraces a holistic creation of character by employing the full range of our own compositional palettes. While this approach leads to a less stereotypical representation of the characters onstage, it can also be met by backlash from commissioners and audiences who are expecting the more familiar exotic tropes. This set of assumptions on the part of the audience constitutes a newer form of exoticism that is directed more toward the composers themselves than the characters on stage.