The New York Times Profiles Janinah Burnett
Voodoo Janinah Burnett, center, and Barry L. Robinson, left, at the Miller Theater at Columbia University. Credit: Sara Krulwich/The New York Times
There is a fit of jealousy in Harry Lawrence Freeman’s opera “Voodoo,” revived on Friday and Saturday for its first performances since 1928, that seems ridiculous when it’s described. Lolo, a Louisiana plantation worker and Voodoo priestess, snatches a protective amulet out of the hands of her rival for the love of the man she adores, destroying it.
“The moment is sheer melodrama. That it had dignity, and even a certain grandeur, is because of Janinah Burnett, the soprano who sang Lolo in the semi-staged production, at the Miller Theater at Columbia University. Her voice full of feeling as she sank, distraught but artfully restrained, into her chair, Ms. Burnett treated her potentially campy role with the care and affection you might give a long-lost family heirloom while lifting it from a dusty box at the back of the closet.”
A touching and noble project has put this heirloom back on the mantel for all to see. “Voodoo,” completed around 1914, soon disappeared from the repertory, along with more than a dozen operas that Mr. Freeman (1869-1954), one of the important musical artists of the Harlem Renaissance, composed during his long, distinguished career.
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