In case anyone missed it or was trapped in a cave, December was
Amistad month. Within less than a week, we saw premieres of a new
opera and a Steven Spielberg motion picture based upon the
historical tale of the 1839 African slave rebellion on the Spanish
slave ship La Amistad. For those without newspapers or electricity,
Amistad relates the story of fifty-two Mendes slaves from Sierra Leone,
who mutinied, then sailed to America, where they were imprisoned.
Following much behind-the-scenes political and judicial wrangling,
and after an argument before the Supreme Court by ex-president John Quincy
Adams, the captives were granted their freedom
and allowed to return to their homeland.
It would be difficult for any Hollywood depiction touching
on racial issues not to seem simplistic or
even disingenuous, viewed against the broader, much more complex tapestry of
racial unease in the land. Yet, such lapses in
Spielberg’s film seem minor indeed when set against the
catastrophe that is the opera Amistad,
which had its world premiere at the
Lyric Opera of Chicago days before the movie opened. In fact, the P.R.
onslaught in Chicago was nearly as extensive for the opera
as it was for the
film, with symposia, lavish pre-publicity by both major dailies, and
educational outreach to “up to 20,000 area schoolchildren.”
One would think it almost impossible to create a version of this stirring tale
that is completely devoid of passion and intensity, but, miraculously,
the composer Anthony