Faces in the Flames
Libretto
January 2025
Synopsis
Three scenes and two interludes tell the story of photographer Thomas Askew, an Atlanta resident whose images captured the dignity of African Americans during a time when only stereotypical imagery of Blacks circulated. In the first scene of the opera, Askew journeys via wagon from Cobb County Georgia to encounter a thriving community of free blacks in the city of Atlanta. In the second scene the photographer now runs a thriving photo business in the middle of a middle-class city. Newly arrived W.E.B. Dubois asks Askew to send his photos to the Paris Exhibition. The photographer, over the objections of his wife, agrees to send the photographs. In the final scene, Askew’s studio has been destroyed by the Great Atlanta fire. Two of his photographic subjects search the ruins for images while the ghost of Askew proclaims the dignity of African American people. Throughout the opera a chorus of African Americans reflect the aspirations of a hopeful community at the turn of the twentieth century.
Scene 1 – 1869: The Wagon Journey
Characters:
Thomas Askew: African American Tenor
Caterina: African American Mezzo Soprano
Little Mary: African American Soprano
Freedman: African American Baritone
“Nowhere to go but forward – Johnny Mae was lynched behind.”
Hit the mule. Move the wagon faster… faster…. Faster… fly.
The scene unfolds as a wagon carrying newly freed African Americans leaves Cobb County Georgia enroute to Atlanta. Thomas Askew travels with Caterina who drives the wagon too fast.
The road is bumpy and the chorus creates the sense of the wagon as it moves from cotton fields to the city. Askew is afraid, but Caterina assures him that she has seen the city where Negros who were once enslaves now own houses, dress like gentlemen and use their talents to capacity. Little Alice, who rides in the back of the wagon, wants to return to the plantation where she has come to know every crack in the wall and stone in the ground. The others urge her to forget the past and see her future in a new routine of living with liberty.
The music has the feeling of a plodding bounce. It follows the steady forward motion of the horse’s hooves. Four people sit in a wagon as other African American people walks alongside. They carry bundles on their heads and in their arms. FREEDMAN and CATERINA hold a steady chant. ASKEW, a young man is expectant, ALICE is afraid.
CHORUS
Walking.
FREEDMAN
Move it, keep on driving…
(HE repeats this like a musical underscore)
CHORUS
Walking.
CATERINA
Moving. Going on
I’ve got the horse.
I’ve got the reigns.
Moving. Going on.
CHORUS
Walking.
ASKEW
Moving forward to…
ALL
(long and sustained)
Atlanta.
Here we come.
ALICE
Auntie why are all the people going.
Can’t you take me back.
FREEDMAN
Move it, keep on driving.
We’re not going back.
ALICE
Everything I know is back there.
My favorite chair, the teddy bear
Mama made for me.
FREEDMAN
Move it, keep on driving.
ALL except ALICE
(long and sustained)
We’re not going back.
(The pace of the wagon slows.)
THOMAS
What’s that ahead?
CATERINA
Men!
FREEDMAN
White men.
ALL
Looking.
Staring.
Glaring.
ASKEW
Should we stop?
CATERINA
We keep moving.
We don’t stop.
Cause now we’re free.
FREEDMAN
Me…(extended)
I’ve always been free.
(A tense musical moment as the wagon passes by the White men who follow them with their eyes. The people in the wagon shift emotions from fear to stoicism to relief.)
ASKEW
We passed through.
ALL
Atlanta.
Here we come.
ASKEW
I can’t wait to get there Caterina.
I want to see it all.
Reynoldstown near the railway
With the red bricks, paved streets, wooden houses.
Where the colored people live.
That’s where we’re gonna be.
CATERINA
Cause now we’re free.
FREEDMAN
Good bye Marietta Georgia.
You won’t find me there, it’s a nightmare.
I went back to pick up my tools,
Say goodbye to my kin folk.
Passed my old shop and saw him,
Uncle Robert.
Hanging like slaughtered deer.
Swinging from a rope.
White men done it.
They…they…
(He cannot voice it, or he wails…)
All he wanted was to be free.
FREEDMAN
Move it, keep on driving
(HE repeats this like a musical underscore)
CATERINA
Moving. Going on
I’ve got the horse.
I’ve got the reigns.
Moving. Going on
INTERLUDE A
The chorus of “Moving, Going on” from the previous scene is underscored by the sound of stringed instruments as the people from the wagon scene disperse.
The house of Thomas Askew appears as the chorus, now dressed in late Victorian attire, begins to dance in the formation of the quadrille accompanied by the music of a string quartet. https://squaredancehistory.org/items/show/1691
ENSEMBLE/CHORUS
Advance.
Retreat.
Now bow.
Then repeat.
Advance.
Retreat.
Exchange.
Hold the beat.
Circle your partner
Now your mate.
Promenade around.
Keep your eyes off the ground.
Back to your places.
Don’t settle down.
Grab your mate.
We’re homeward bound.
Scene 2- 1900: The Paris Exhibition
Characters:
Thomas Askew: African American Tenor
Mary, his seamstress wife: African American Soprano
W.E.B. Dubois: African American Baritone
Sadie, a pre-teen: African American Mezzo Soprano
When the dance settles, the performers are in Thomas Askew’s Living Room and it is January 1900. SADIE, a young teenager, in Victorian attire, looks through an imaginary window that faces the audience. THOMAS and MARY, husband and wife, are preparing the parlor for her photo session.
TRIO: Fashionable Atlanta in the Parlor
SADIE
Look at all the fashionable people.
See them out there?
They wear lacy tea dresses,
With ruffles and hats.
You see that?
ASKEW
Come away from the window.
SADIE
Wait till Mama sees how pretty I will be,
In your photograph.
MARY
Sit down Sadie,
Let me bring you some tea.
Thomas, she’s a handful!
THOMAS
Mary, leave her to me.
MARY exits. THOMAS takes SADIE by the hand and places her in the photography area.
Sadie, you will sit right here.
Behind this little table.
Now cross your hands.
Look over there.
Wait until I say you’re clear.
I set up my light box to embrace my people.
I insert glass plates, open camera doors.
Light moves through my lenses transforming the negatives.
Alchemy burns away all I deplore.
There is a knock at the door. THOMAS opens it. W.E.B. Dubois enters. HE is a slightly pompous, well-dressed man.
RECITATIVE: A Curated Exhibition
DUBOIS
Askew!
THOMAS
Dubois?
DUBOIS
I came as soon as I could to deliver some wonderful news.
We can solve the “negro problem”
SADIE
Are we a problem?
THOMAS
Dubois, I’m in session.
DUBOIS
It can wait!
This is the chance of a lifetime.
I need your help to assemble,
A curated exhibition,
In Paris.
ASKEW
What?
DUBOIS
Of American Negros
Your Photography!
Your Images!
They will see how they are wrong.
ASKEW
Who? William, have you gone mad?
ARIA: The Problem of the Twentieth Century
Thomas, I am a paradox.
A civilized member of a civilized state.
No barbarian.
Yet here in America,
Everywhere I go,
They call me a Negro and a problem.
This must stop
Thomas, this must stop.
Our emancipation is not real.
Twenty-seven years of educating, organizing,
Sociological studies and always
We are poor,
We are lynched.
We are exploited.
And they call us the barbarians.
We must prove ourselves.
We need statistics! Numbers!
We must show.
What we own, where we pray, what we build.
Charts, surveys, interviews.
And photographs.
In Paris they will dedicate a building.
At the World Exhibition
Where our true selves will be revealed.
My man, this is opportunity.
(MARY enters.)
RECITATIVE: Charts!
MARY
What did you say?
France?
The French…they consider us baboons!
DUBOIS
But we can change that.
MARY
(spoken)
Convincing others with charts? This is not the way.
ARIA: Our Life is in Atlanta
Thomas Askew!
Our life is in Atlanta.
Look at what we have.
This, is our miracle.
Minne and Arthur and Clarence and Walter,
Norman and Nellie and Georgia.
Here, in Atlanta
Our jewels, my babies, are safe
They have jobs, lives, professional careers
We have moved beyond our “place”.
A living room parlor,
With upholstered chairs,
A wide brimmed bonnet,
I wear with my hair.
Nowhere else will give us the same.
Thomas Askew!
Remember Marietta?
Prickly cotton in red clay dirt.
Here, is our miracle.
Your photography has made it all real.
You have visualized
Our family,
My business,
This is dignity.
Here is life.
We have all we need.
Your photography has made it all real.
Don’t send our images away.
DUBOIS
(spoken)
Mary. With all due respect, you are a brilliant seamstress, but your husband is the photographer.
THOMAS
And I want to see Paris!
(Dramatic pause.)
DUBOIS
You?!!!
You are not going.
Only your photographs will go.
I present the materials with Calloway and Murray.
Your photographs will be enough.
They say all that the public needs to know.
THOMAS
ARIA into TRIO: I Want to see Paree.
So!
You will take my art work and leave me behind.
You! Now you will be the savior of the Negro people.
W.E.B Dubois.
You come to Atlanta with your Harvard degree.
To take my pictures away from me.
Dubois these images are a testament.
To our family, my business, our dignity.
Ohhhh…
I wanted to see Paris
And Paree wants to see me.
See that wondrous new tower,
They call the Eiffel
Art Nouveau.
City of lights.
Cinema.
Dubois!
(Musical accent.)
Now I will never see it.
ALL
And yet…
These photographs are a testament.
Sitting here in frames who do they serve?
They merely return the gaze,
Of those who created them.
Sepia and stately…
ASKEW
Take them. The world must know who we are.
INTERLUDE B
Moving vignettes in three poses. 1902, 1906,
Black businesses are buzzing.
Commercial corridor
Alonzo Herndon is a millionaire! I’m protecting my property with his Atlanta Life Insurance Company.
Citizen’s Trust Bank lent me my money. Now I’ve got a home!
I’m married to Mayor Dobbs. He ain’t no mayor! Well, he is to me.
I’m on my way to Big Bethel AME
And the N – double A- CP (1909)
A separate economy of drugstores, markets, etc.
Atlanta Race Riot/Massacre of 1906 – Burning! They’re burning us out. Militia men in the streets, smashing the window of Herndon’s barber shop, killing thirty of us.
Scene 3 – 1917: Aftermath of the Atlanta Fire
Characters:
Thomas Askew: African American Tenor
Sadie: African American Mezzo Soprano
Alice: African American Soprano
Townsman: Baritone.
“Here are the faces of all my photographs, my neighbors, my children, my family, my wife. In the residue, all I can see are the embers of something new.”
The scene begins with a townsman describing the destruction of the Great Atlanta Fire that burned Thomas Askew’s studio. Askew’s ghost appears and bemoans the loss of his life’s work. Two women who were his neighbors and photographic subjects appear and relive their photographic session in his now-burned studio. Askew offers Sadie and Alice a picture frame and asks them to preserve his legacy. The two women, now inspired by the ghost, declare their intention to create a legacy from the embers of the flames.
(May 23, 1917. The aftermath of the Great Atlanta Fire., Thomas Askew, appears. He is a ghost.)
DEMISE
ASKEW
This smoke blinds my eyes.
I am gone.
My vision distorted.
My studio vanished.
A lifetime buried.
I am gone.
(SADIE and ALICE enter. They are panicked.)
THE GREAT FIRE
SADIE
This fire alarm was sounding, sounding.
ALICE
The flames came down from Decatur Street, spreading from that dusty old warehouse.
BOTH
Winds whipped the fury of the great fire.
ALICE
Crackling and popping across Buttermilk Bottoms.
With white folks gawking.
SADIE
Wooden houses burning.
Fire became firestorm.
BOTH
SADIE
Ten hours, three hundred acres, two thousand homes.
BOTH
Gone.
(ALICE and SADIE explore the rubble.)
DISCOVERY
SADIE
What’s that I see?
ALICE
Wooden slats charred and smoking.
A burnt tower of brick where Mr. Askew’s home once stood.
SADIE
Just a tower of charred bricks.
ALICE
Where a family once lived.
THE PICTURE ROOM
SADIE
This was the room.
ALICE
You were all dressed up.
I wore my favorite bonnet over well-pressed hair.
Child, you just would not sit down.
Like a tornado crashing through Mr. Askew’s home.
SADIE
You were fussing Mom
“Don’t touch that!” you said.
ALICE
Leave that alone.
SADIE
Look Mom. A chair.
(ALICE sets the chair upright.)
ALICE
Sit. Here.
SADIE
I found a book.
BOTH
A picture book to look at.
(SADIE holds the book and they remember.)
MEMORY
We posed for Mr. Askew.
ALICE
Comfortably, in the cherry wood chair.
We sat in a state of grace.
SADIE
Beautiful, with well-pressed hair.
ALICE
We sat with dignity,
A picture of respectability.
BOTH
And now it’s all gone.
(SADIE and ALICE freeze in their positions. ASKEW enters and observes them.)
EMBERS OF SOMETHING NEW – aria into trio
ASKEW
Where are my images.
Burnt in flames,
No.
Frame it.
Frame it right.
I set up my light box to embrace my people.
I insert glass plates, open camera doors.
Light moves through my lenses transforming the negatives.
Alchemy burns away all I deplore.
I will not let them see us as Topsy or Sambo.
Those tired images have got to go.
Inside of my photos I craft new imaginings
Capturing all we aspire to be.
We know who we are.
It’s alchemy.
(ASKEW gathers two frames from the rubble and offers them to SADIE and ALICE.)
Here! Take the frames!
(SADIE and ALICE take the picture frames and hold them, framing their faces for the audience.)
My subjects defy subjugation.
They stand as a picture of dignity.
SADIE
Liberty.
Prosperity.
Respectability.
For Eternity.
ALL
See them/us
Here are the faces of all my photographs.
Neighbors, my children
My family, my wife.
In the residue, all I can see are the embers of something new.
The embers of something new.
The embers of something new.