The La Traviata Affair

Race, politics, and opera production during apartheid South Africa intersect in this historiographic work on the Eoan Group, a &ldquo;coloured&rdquo; cultural organization that performed opera in the Cape. <I>The </I>La Traviata<I> Affair</I> charts Eoan&rsquo;s opera activities from the group&rsquo;s inception in 1933 until the cessation of their productions by 1980. It explores larger questions of complicity, compromise, and compliance; of assimilation, appropriation, and race; and of &ldquo;European art music&rdquo; in situations of &ldquo;non-European&rdquo; dispossession and disenfranchisement. Performing under the auspices of apartheid, the group&rsquo;s unquestioned acceptance of and commitment to the art of opera could not redeem it from the entanglements that came with the political compromises it made. Uncovering a rich trove of primary source materials, Hilde Roos presents here for the first time the story of one of the premier cultural agencies of apartheid South Africa.<BR /> &#160;