Class, Race, and Uplift in the Opera House: Theodore Drury and his Company Cross the Color Line

Between 1900 and 1907, Theodore Drury (1867–c.1943) managed the first long-running black opera troupe in America. For white authors, Drury’s company was intriguing but threatening to their stereotypes about blacks and art music. Drury and the black press positioned his productions as racially and musically uplifting experiences that confirmed their elite audience’s worthiness to participate fully in white society. The company’s reception also demonstrates that the concept of racial uplift and the methods to achieve it were hotly contested within the African American community. Thus the opera house became a site of tension between competing ideas about class, race, and uplift.