NEW YORK TIMES
SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 8, 1970
The other Stein-Thomson opera, "Four Saints in Three Acts," will
not be done this fall by the Opera Society of
Washington, D.C., as planned, but its replacement is an even more
rarely heard work.
It is Delius's "Koanga," which apparently has not been heard since 1935, when Sir Thomas Beecham conducted it in London with Oda Slobodskaya, a Russian soprano, and the late John Brownlee, the Australian baritone who made his home here. "Koanga" has never been given in this country, and the Washington dates are Dec. 18, 20 and 21. Paul Callaway will conduct and Frank Corsaro will be the stage director. Eugene Holmes will have the title role. Claudia Lindsey and Edward Pierson will also be in the cast.
The opera is drawn from "The Grandissimes," an 1830 novel by George Washington Cable. The libretto is concerned with love and death among the slaves in Mississippi in the early part of the 19th century.