PHOTO BY KARLI CADEL/THE GLIMMERGLASS FESTIVAL

The story of how a groundbreaking opera company got its start should make for a good opera. The story of how the National Negro Opera Company got its start in Pittsburgh should make for a great opera — to be performed in Pittsburgh.

Pittsburgh Opera will present “The Passion of Mary Cardwell Dawson,” about the music teacher who founded the longest-running, all-Black opera company in 1941.

Pittsburgh Opera General Director Christopher Hahn says a lot of people may not know Dawson’s story, despite the significant effort underway to restore the National Opera House in Homewood, where the National Negro Opera Company began.

“The first performances in Pittsburgh are of tremendous importance,” Hahn says.

Hahn first visited the National Opera House in 2017 when Pittsburgh Opera performed “The Summer King,” the story of the great Negro Leagues baseball player Josh Gibson; the cast took a field trip to the site. Not long after that, one of Hahn’s colleagues, who runs the Glimmerglass Opera Festival in upstate New York, let him know she was putting together an opera about Dawson.

“I knew really instantaneously that this was a piece that needed to be done here,” Hahn says.

PHOTO BY JATI LINDSAY, COURTESY OF WASHINGTON NATIONAL OPERA

What Dawson was able to do in the 1940s was incredible, he relates. Starting an opera company from scratch involves more than just finding great singers; Dawson had to find chorus members, seamstresses and stagehands who could travel and put on world-class shows.

At the time, the opera house was a boarding house for Black celebrities who needed a place to stay while they were in town. Dawson’s music studio was on the third floor.

Dawson “was able to plug into a support system that helped encourage her very brave, almost quixotic quest because she was not able to, for reasons of segregation at that time, be a part of any of the other opera companies around, and so she basically decided to form her own,” Hahn says.

The opera went on to perform major productions at The Met in New York City, in Chicago and in Washington, D.C.

“She was a fascinating person bubbling out of Pittsburgh, and we all need to know that.”

The show was written by Sandra Seaton with music from Carlos Simon and selections from “Carmen.”

“The Passion of Mary Cardwell Dawson”
April 27, 30 & May 3, 5
Byham Theater
pittsburghopera.org