(Left to right) Austin Gaskin, Teia Watson and Brittany Graham at the Feb. 2 Afro Opera Black History Month showcase, “A Message from the Roots.”
Photo courtesy of Maiya Stevenson
By Alisha Durosier
A captivated audience listened as Matthew 6:9-13 angelically echoed through the pews of First Presbyterian Church in St. Petersburg.
“For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever. Amen,” is the last verse of “The Lord’s Prayer,” and all eyes were fixed on the brown-skinned vocal powerhouse with cornrows feeding into an afro, as she belted the last line of the prayer she used to sing to herself as a child.
“I always open every concert with prayer,” said opera singer Maiya Stevenson.
This prerequisite is why “The Lord’s Prayer,” the only opera aria Stevenson sung not composed or inspired by Black people, opened the Feb. 2 Black History Month showcase called “A Message from the Roots.”
The showcase was organized by Stevenson’s LLC, Afro Opera, a business initially created in 2017 to title Stevenson’s senior year recital in college and to host her first ticketed concert, but eventually developed into a mission to expose the Black community to the world of classical music.
The showcase was hosted at First Presbyterian Church, where Stevenson alternated with Black opera singers Brittany Graham and Teia Watson, along with accompanying pianist Austin Gaskin.
The artists recounted a conversation between a slave and her mistress in Rhiannon Giddens’ “Julie’s Aria,” conveyed the ache of a sorrowful woman in Florence Price’s “Resignation” and performed classical renditions of age-old African American spirituals created to help communities endure their harsh realities.
Photo courtesy of Maiya Stevenson
For Stevenson, a Florida A&M University (FAMU) graduate, the Black History Month showcase is “mainly supposed to highlight African American composers,” which was inspired by Stevenson’s experiences performing for Black audiences.
“After doing gigs and events in the Black community, a lot of them talked about ‘Porgy and Bess,’” Stevenson said.
George Gershwin’s “Porgy and Bess” is an opera which premiered in 1935. Telling the story of a Black neighborhood in Charleston, SC, the opera features an all-Black cast.
“A lot of them don’t know that ‘Porgy and Bess’ was not written by an African American person. George Gershwin was not Black,” Stevenson explained.
Stevenson decided that her Black History Month showcase would be an opportunity to bring Black-inspired classical pieces, Black composers and opera singers to the forefront where her community can see.
Stevenson held the inaugural “A Message from the Roots,” showcase in 2024, marking her step back into the limelight after experiencing a great loss of confidence in her ability to pursue opera.
“I still did some singing, but it wasn’t about me anymore,” said Stevenson, who sung in choruses with the Tampa Bay Opera. “This was just for me to at least not lose my voice. But for six years… I never thought about singing a solo again or performing by myself on stage again. I was lost. I felt like music was a waste of time because I didn’t know everything.”
With the help of Watson, who agreed to performed at the 2024 showcase for free, Stevenson found her way back to the stage after her six-year stint of not singing solo.
Photo courtesy of Maiya Stevenson
Graham, who got started in opera by accident in 2015 after being signed up for the wrong audition, shares a similar mission with Afro Opera. She wants to ensure that minorities in the classical music space or with an interest in classical music don’t feel alone or unseen.
“I grew up in Missouri, there’s nothing, there’s no opera, there’s hardly any arts so I always felt alone,” said Graham, who got started in opera by accident in 2015, after being signed up for the wrong audition. “I was introduced to these Black opera singers and these Black composers and I’m like oh my gosh there’s this whole world that I don’t know about.”
Originating in Europe, opera, much like other forms of classical music, has been a predominantly white scene since its inception.
Growing up in Child’s Park, a primarily Black neighborhood in St. Petersburg, it wasn’t until high school when Stevenson was exposed to opera music. Even then it was by accident.
Stevenson also noted that many of the students she started with at FAMU eventually dropped out.
“In the Black community, when you say, I’m going to school for music, you don’t know that you have to take music theory classes. You don’t know that you have to take piano. You don’t know that you have to do voice lessons. You don’t know it’s classical,” Stevenson said. “Luckily, I was already exposed to it in high school, I already knew what to expect. But the people that I was supposed to graduate with didn’t.”
Diversity in the classical music scene is both an exposure and access problem.
“It’s intentional,” said Allyssa Jones, the director of vocal ensembles and assistant director for USF’s School of Music. “They don’t want too many of us.”
Jones notes that Black people’s entrance into classical music, a genre created by White people for White people, was simply Black people engaging with what they were hearing in the 19th and early 20th century.
“We have to master their music to be considered musicians and have been mastering their music for centuries,” Jones said. “By erasing and putting us in the background, what does that say to us then? That it’s not our music? Now granted, we didn’t make it up, but it’s as much ours because we had to learn it and thereby contributed to it.”
Graham stresses that it’s a constant process for Black classical musicians to prove that “we belong here too.”
“They [Black classical musicians] might feel like they’re physically alone but here’s all this around you, this is what you can be,” she said.
More Black composers and classical musicians are taking center stage, lost and forgotten opera pieces by Black composers are being uncovered, and audiences are becoming more aware of Black musicians in the classical music scene.
“I think we have this bubbling up of so many Black professional chamber ensembles,” Jones said. “I think that our professional activity where we are embracing our identity and getting out there is really spurring this discovering and uncovering of all of this music that we’re finding.”
As Graham puts it, “it’s just been a continuous road. We’re still breaking barriers and creating spaces.”
Stevenson wants to expand her concerts beyond Black History Month, aiming to commemorate every holiday with a concert and a small-scale tour.
Ultimately, Stevenson would like to establish a program that will introduce classical music to children in title I schools.
“I want Afro Opera to be a platform for other artists to shine, [and] to expose themselves to the community,” said Stevenson. “There’s a lot of African American classical singers out there, but not a lot of people know about them. I want my business to be a part of exposing more communities to us, to African American opera singers.”
