Tom Cipullo

Josephine

Monodrama in One Scene

Music and Libretto by Tom Cipullo

Duration: ca.30 minutes

Commissioned by UrbanArias (Washington, D.C.)

Premiered at the Atlas Arts Center, Washington D.C. on April 2, 2016

                                      “theatrically riveting…”                                   

                                                                                                       Patrick Rucker, The Washington Post (2016)

                                                      “Cipullo’s music and libretto presented a compelling portrait of Baker, one that 

illustrated both her strengths and her flaws...”                                        

                                                                                                                                                                                        Arlo McKinnon, Opera News  (2018)

                     “…the music…is softened, even sweetened, with periodic jazzy riffs to capture the fabulous legacy of Baker herself… The text beautifully portrays the impact of a willful artist who lived life full of contradiction.”

                                                                                                                                                                    Debbie Minter Jackson, D.C. Theater Scene (2016)

 Character

       Josephine Baker………Soprano

  Instrumentation

flute, clarinet, violin, cello, piano

 Synopsis

Paris, 1975.  Josephine Baker is being interviewed in her dressing room shortly before her final comeback performance. Chanteuse, exotic dancer, businesswoman, civil rights activist, and war hero, Josephine reveals more than her interviewer ever expected.

       Recent Productions

New Orleans Opera (2022)

Opera Colorado (2019 and 2021)

Chelsea Opera (New York) (2019)

University of North Texas (2018)

UrbanArias (Washington D.C.) (2016)

Josephine – Composer’s Note

            Josephine Baker was an acclaimed entertainer, a war hero, a wealthy businesswoman, an activist for civil rights, and a towering personality. As critic Michael Rogin noted in the London Review of Books, hers was “a triumphant career, honored by a full-scale military funeral, and yet it was contaminated at every major turn.”

            And why should that life have been such a mix of triumph and disaster? What made her so mercurial, so volcanic, so alternately charming and volatile? That’s the question I pursued as I composed the opera.

            In creating the libretto for Josephine, I was inspired by her own words.  Indeed, the more controversial, more colorful statements are direct quotes.  Musically, a snippet based on Bix Beiderbecke’s 1927 piano work, In a Mist, appears at several climactic moments in the score.  In its Debussy-ish harmony and jaunty rhythm, the work seemed to me the perfect emblem of Jazz-Age Paris.

            Jean-Claude Baker, often called the thirteenth of Josephine Baker’s twelve adopted children, wrote, “Josephine was like the sun.  We need the sun for the flowers to grow, …but if you come too close, you can get burned, you can die.  Everyone who came too close to Josephine got burned.”

                                                                                                                                     T.C., March 28, 2016

Josephine is published by E.C. Schirmer.