Singin' Billy

File:William Walker, American composer.jpg

Singin' Billy: A Folk Opera is a 1952 opera composed by Charles F. Bryan from a libretto by Donald Davidson. The narrative is loosely based on the life of the singing school teacher William Walker (1809–1875), who compiled the 1835 tunebook Southern Harmony. In the opera, Walker's virtue is contrasted with the corruption of Kinch Hardy, a local trouble maker in the fictional Oconee Town in Pickens County, South Carolina.{{Cite book|last=Livingston|first=Carolyn|year=2003|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=X9xZpQjI0lMC&pg=PA160|title=Charles Faulkner Bryan: His Life and Music|location=Knoxville, Tennessee|publisher=University of Tennessee Press|pages=160–162|isbn=1-57233-220-4}}

Walker had caught the attention of Southern folklorists and musicologists in 1933, when George Pullen Jackson, a friend and colleague of Davidson at Vanderbilt University, had covered him in his book White Spirituals in the Southern Uplands.{{Cite journal|last=Patterson|first=Daniel W.|year=1988|url=https://www.questia.com/library/journal/1G1-112586639/religious-music-in-the-south|title=Religious Music in the South|journal=Southern Literary Journal|volume=21|issue=1}} The opera includes five hymns from Southern Harmony.

Performance history

The premiere took place at the Vanderbilt University Theater on April 23, 1952. The production ran until April 28 and starred a cast from the Vanderbilt Theater and the music department of Peabody College. The libretto was published by The Foundation for American Education in 1985.{{Cite book|last=Ross Griffel|first=Margaret|year=2013|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Y8bQAwAAQBAJ&pg=PA453|title=Operas in English: A Dictionary|location=Lanham, Maryland|publisher=Scarecrow Press|page=453|isbn=978-0-8108-8325-3|author-link= Margaret Ross Griffel}}

Roles

class="wikitable"

!Role

!Voice type

William Walker, "Singin' Billy"

|baritone

Kinch Hardy, "a mountain boy"

|tenor or baritone

Callie Wilkins, a widow, and town matriarch

|alto

Jennie Alsop, the bride

|part of the chorus

John Alsop, the bridegroom

|part of the chorus

Gussie Epps, Kinch's sweetheart

|soprano

Hank MacGregor, Callie's nephew, a young blacksmith

|tenor

Margaret Williams, a young woman

|soprano

Hezekiah Golightly, an elderly Revolutionary War veteran

|baritone

Omer Dunavant, an awkward but apt pupil

|part of the chorus

References