The Princess Diaries
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »
Steve Robinson first heard about Princess Magogo in the fall of 2000. He’d just arrived to take over management of WFMT when he got a call from Regina Fraser, a member of the Chicago-Durban Sister Cities committee, about a South African opera based on the true story of a 20th-century Zulu princess. Constance Magogo kaDinuzulu, who was born in 1900, was the daughter of a king, a singer with a three-octave range, a composer, one of the last players of the ugubhu (a musical bow), the chief archivist of Zulu music, and the first female “praise singer.” Her son, Prince Mangosuthu Buthelezi, grew up to lead the Inkatha Freedom Party and become South Africa’s first postapartheid home affairs minister. Her story, told in flashback in the opera, encompasses the modern history of the Zulus, including their struggles against the British. The opera, at that time still being written by composer Mzilikazi Khumalo and librettist Themba Msimang, had been commissioned by an Afrikaner, Sandra de Villiers, for performance by Durban’s Opera Africa, which she heads. The music would be based on songs written by the princess, and her role would be sung by renowned South African mezzo-soprano Sibongile Khumalo (no relation to the composer). Fraser wanted Robinson to travel to Durban and put the opera on the air; when he asked to hear a sample of the composer’s music she sent him a cantata based on the life of the Zulu king Shaka. “I was bowled over,” Robinson recalls.
That turned out to be optimistic, but three Humanities Festival-sponsored performances were set for March 2003 at the Oriental Theatre. Then, in late December 2002, Mackevich got a call from the South African consul general and was informed, she says, that “there was a labor dispute and it was serious….We engaged attorneys to advise us, and the upshot was a strong possibility that the suit would not be settled by March. Based on that advice, we had no choice but to cancel.” The South African press reported that Opera Africa had replaced most of the leads except Sibongile Khumalo and that the performers–including the KwaZulu-Natal Philharmonic Orchestra, the Durban Serenade Choral Society, and five soloists–had filed suit, charging the producers with breach of contract and complaining, among other things, that their musical heritage had been exploited.
Today is the last day of work for 11 members of the Department of Cultural Affairs who bit on an early retirement package one of them calls “too good to pass up.” Among them, media relations director Linda Wedenoja, who joined the staff of what was then the Chicago Council on Fine Arts during Jane Byrne’s administration; 29-year veteran Rose Farina; grants chief Marye Young; assistant commissioner Pat Matsumoto; and first deputy commissioner Joan Small, who says the Princess Magogo project “started here, at my desk.”
