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Musical Louisiana: America’s Cultural Heritage, presented annually by the Historic New Orleans Collection and the Louisiana Philharmonic Orchestra, is both a concert for music lovers and an educational experience for students.Preconcert talk: 5 p.m., Williams Research Center (410 Chartres Street)
Concert: 7:30 p.m., St. Louis Cathedral
Admission is free and open to the public, and seating is first-come, first-served. Guests can RSVP to receive concert reminders and email updates, but registration does not guarantee a seat: my.hnoc.org/17531
Join us for a preconcert talk at 5 p.m. at the Williams Research Center, 410 Chartres Street. The panel discussion will include artistic director Givonna Joseph (OperaCréole), artistic director designate Patrick Dupre Quigley (Opera Lafayette), Dédé biographer Sally McKee (University of California, Davis), and musicologist Candace Bailey (North Carolina Central University), moderated by HNOC family historian Jari C. Honora.
About the program:
This year’s edition of Musical Louisiana presents the long-awaited world premiere of New Orleanian Edmond Dédé’s Morgiane (1887). This historic composition remains the earliest known surviving full-length opera written by a Black American composer. Lauded for works that transformed some of France’s most popular stages, Dédé packed a variety of musical genres into Morgiane, which has remained a hidden gem for over a century and yet to be heard—until now.
When New Orleans’s OperaCréole cofounder Givonna Joseph learned of Dédé’s newly discovered manuscript, she made it her mission to bring his full opera to life on the stage. After more than a decade of work, her dream is now realized. This concert, produced through a dynamic partnership between the Historic New Orleans Collection, the Louisiana Philharmonic Orchestra, OperaCréole, and Opera Lafayette, marks a pivotal moment in the repatriation of New Orleans composer Edmond Dédé’s life, music, and legacy. The city’s musical and cultural powerhouses will finally unveil this previously unheard work in the composer’s hometown, in St. Louis Cathedral, where Dédé was baptized in January of 1828.
This concert will feature the Grammy Award–winning Louisiana Philharmonic Orchestra, six acclaimed soloists—baritone Joshua Conyers, bass Kenneth Kellogg, tenor Chauncey Packer, sopranos Taylor J. White and Mary Elizabeth Williams, and bass-baritone Jonathan Woody—and OperaCréole’s principal singers and chorus under the baton of Washington, DC–based Opera Lafayette’s artistic director designate (and New Orleans native) Patrick Dupre Quigley. The production will draw selections from three acts of the opera.
Learn more: hnoc.org/musical-louisiana-2025
Support:
The 2025 edition of Musical Louisiana is made possible with support from Lead Sponsor J.P. Morgan and sponsors New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Foundation, Arts New Orleans, Louisiana Office of Cultural Development, National Endowment for the Arts, and Birdfoot Festival Board of Directors.
(Image: Edmond Dédé; HNOC, gift of Al Rose; orig. at Amistad Research Center. Morgiane; 1887; by Dédé; Harvard Univ.)
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Event Venue & Nearby Stays
St. Louis Cathedral, 617 Pirate Aly, New Orleans, LA 70116, United States,New Orleans, Louisiana
Tickets
