Cabildo
(Beach/Stephens) 1932

“Cabildo, Cabildo, what does it mean?” sings a chorus of tourists. In Spanish, cabildo means “town hall,” and this specific Cabildo in New Orleans is the setting for Amy Beach and Nan Bagby Stephens’ opera. Inside a prison within the Cabildo, a tour guide presents his clients with a mystery: How did pirate Pierre Lafitte escape from his cell to defend New Orleans against the British in the War of 1812? Legend has it that General (and future U.S. President) Andrew Jackson got Pierre out in exchange for his naval support, but a tourist on her honeymoon dreams of a new history in which an illicit romance with the Governor’s wife helps set Pierre free. 

Finished in 1932, the opera Cabildo had its first production at the University of Georgia in 1945, but wouldn’t see its first professional performance until 50 years later at Lincoln Center. Writing for Gramophone, Michael Oliver says Cabildo “is very cleverly written, the piano trio never sounding like a stand-in for an absent orchestra; often, indeed, a single instrument is used, and very evocatively too.” Beach incorporates Creole folk music alongside Romantic art song to distinguish different classes of characters, and she separates the dream within the opera by setting it entirely in flat keys. The opera’s U.K. premiere in 2019 received a 4-star review from The Guardian, with Flora Willson noting, “Beach’s only opera – short but hardly ever performed – is a real discovery.” She described Beach’s score as a “soundworld dominated by Brahms, folk music and post-Wagnerian harmony.”

The Cabildo frames New Orleans’ iconic Jackson Square along with its neighbors, the St. Louis Cathedral and the Presbytère. It originally served as the seat of government when Spain briefly controlled the Louisiana Territory in the latter half of the 1700s. In 1803, Spain returned the land back to France, and just three weeks later, France sold Louisiana to the United States, doubling the size of the new country. Both the Spanish transfer of power and the Louisiana Purchase took place inside the Cabildo. The building later housed the Louisiana Supreme Court, the origin of Plessy v. Ferguson in which the Supreme Court declared “separate but equal” racial segregation constitutional. Today it is home to the Louisiana State Museum. As for the opera’s characters, Pierre Lafitte certainly was a real pirate, and his assistance in the Battle of New Orleans did help the U.S. win the War of 1812; the love plot, however, is an invention by librettist Nan Bagby Stephens.

Still, Cabildo opens up numerous questions about our relationships with our country’s historical sites and the narratives we tell. What histories do we privilege? What histories have been forgotten – either deliberately or otherwise? And how do these histories shape our national identity? We faced these questions during the recent reckoning over Confederate memorials across the U.S., and we will continue to ponder them as gentrification increasingly converts historic buildings and locales to meet contemporary wants and needs.

Bibliography

Block, Adrienne Fried. “Notes on Cabildo.” Liner notes for Beach, Amy. Cabildo. Stephen Mo Hanan, Anthony Dean Griffey, Charlotte Hellekant, Eugene Perry, Paul Groves, Thomas Paul, Lauren Flanigan, Mark Peskanov (violin), Carter Brey (cello), Christopher O’Riley (piano), New York Concert Singers, Ransom Wilson, conductor. Recorded May 15, 1995. Delos International DL 3170, 1995. Accessed December 11, 2023. https://www.amybeach.org/cabildo-info-libretto/.

“The Cabildo, New Orleans.” Louisiana State Museums. Louisiana State Museums. Accessed December 11, 2023. https://louisianastatemuseum.org/museum/cabildo.

Oliver, Michael. “Beach Cabildo; Six Short Pieces.” Gramophone (1995). https://www.gramophone.co.uk/review/beach-cabildo-six-short-pieces.

Willson, Flora. “Cabildo Review – Singing About the American Dream Behind Bars.” The Guardian. Guardian News & Media, September 1, 2019. https://www.theguardian.com/music/2019/sep/01/cabildo-review-singing-about-the-american-dream-behind-bars.