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This chapter examines how Black and Afro-Native ethnologies published in the 1830s and early 1840s resisted the racist visual cultures of comparative anatomy, including craniology and ethnology. The ethnologies of Robert Benjamin Lewis, Hosea Easton, and James W. C. Pennington challenged the tethering of the black body to visual representations of pathology in both science and popular culture through the production of a counter-archive of visual culture, as well as through ekphrastic re-visions of the Black, Native American, and Afro-Native body.

This chapter presents an overview of the premiere and subequent versions and productions of Regina, beginning with the Cheryl Crawford production, directed by Robert Lewis and starring Jane Pickens, that had a short run on Broadway. The chapter also considers the changes in the text that Blitzstein made for the 1953 and 1958 revivals by the New York City Opera, both starring Brenda Lewis; and yet another version premiered and recorded by John Mauceri. The chapter concludes with an overview of recent productions, including those starring Catherine Malfitano, Patti LuPone, and Lauren Flanagan, and critical reception of the work in modern times.

This chapter focusses on Blitzstein’s Reuben Reuben, his major theatrical undertaking from his later years. A modern Faust story touching on fears related to nuclear war, this opera, produced by Cheryl Crawford, directed by Robert Lewis, and starring Eddie Albert, Evelyn Lear, and Kay Ballard, closed out-of-town in Boston. The composer managed to salvage some of the music for his choral oratorio, This Is the Garden, which itself enjoyed only modest success.

Brigadoon was one of de Mille’s most successful musicals and one of her happiest collaborations. The show drew on many stylistic sources, including modern dance, traditional Scottish dance, and ballet. De Mille and director Robert Lewis worked closely together to create seamless transitions between dialogue scenes and dance numbers. They also staged a chase scene and a funeral dance, emphasizing a minor character, Harry Beaton, who threatens to destroy the mythical Scottish village by leaving it forever. Beaton’s character serves to complicate an otherwise sentimental plot, providing an example of the way de Mille’s choreography contributed a distinct layer of meaning to the musical as a whole.

This chapter discusses the long-festering slavery question, which was reaching a glorious, complicated, spectacular, disappointing, and still unpredictable climax. Slaves, soldiers, and civilians were playing large roles in this drama, and much of the discussion remained explicitly or implicitly religious. People continued to debate slavery and freedom in providential if not millennial language, all shaped by battles and alarms. Remarkable, and in some ways revolutionary, change was afoot, often refracted through the lens of faith. Writing after the war, Robert Lewis Dabney predicted that future historians would marvel at how the “the Christianity and philanthropy of our day have given so disproportionate an attention to the evils of African slavery” when so “many other gigantic evils were rampant in this age.” He may have been mystified, but many of his fellow Confederates had thought a good deal about slavery during the war.