Opera and the Mainstreaming of Blackface Minstrelsy

Abstract

In the mid-nineteenth century, blackface minstrelsy entered the mainstream of antebellum popular culture by borrowing from a European musical repertory, drawing on the language of advertisements for legitimate entertainments, and engaging two themes of antebellum popular culture, sentimentality and nationalism. Minstrels' opera parodies used devices similar to the British burlesque tradition: opera in blackface relied on the recontextualization of the original and an unpredictable mingling of sources and subjects. Discussion of three popular blackface opera songs, “I Dreamed Dat I Libed in Hotel Halls,” “See! Sir, See!,” and “Stop Dat Knocking,” demonstrates these processes.