Cecil Gray, who knew Delius well, accounted for his unique style as originating in "a kind of ecstatic revelation...The occasion was one summer night, when he was sitting out on the verandah of his house on his orange grove in Florida, and the sound came to him from the distance of the voices of the Negroes in the plantation, singing in chorus. It is the rapture of this moment that Delius is seeking to communicate in all his characteristic work...." The year was 1884: Delius was 22. Though the Negro influence was immediately palpable, most notably in the Florida Suite (1887), it would require a dozen or more years, the learning and un-learning of traditional technique, and the jostling of several other "revelations"—Wagner, Grieg, the Norwegian alps, Nietzsche—before their amalgamation in the mature works issuing around the turn of the century (e.g., A Village Romeo and Juliet [1900-1901]). On the way would come three ambitious operas. Irmelin (1890-1892) and The Magic Fountain (1893-1895), though they contain ravishing moments, are saddled with poor librettos and a yeasty musical mix. The same is true of Koanga, which took shape between 1895 and 1897, though the raw passion and eighteenth century Louisiana setting engaged his feelings in a more potent way. Based loosely on a two-chapter interlude, "The Story of Bras-Coupé" from George Washington Cable's novel The Grandissimes (1880), Delius composed with improvisational abandon. To his friend Jutta Bell, he wrote on February 25, 1896, "I send you today my libretto of Bras-Coupé—I wrote the music and the words at the same time." Of the music he was more certain—"I am getting all the Southern flavor...keeping the whole in the character of negro [sic] melody." Indeed, the score represents a piquant mix of Wagner and Black minstrelsy—replete with banjo—featuring an extended scene in Act Two based upon the Creole dance" La Calinda," from the Florida Suite. When Bell declined to doctor his haphazard libretto, Delius enlisted the help of Charles F. Keary, a numismatist and litterateur, without improving its stilted diction and labored dramaturgy. He completed the score in Bohemian Paris, in the company of Münch and Strindberg, among others, while making the acquaintance of Jelka Rosen, the young painter whom he would marry in 1903. Koanga received its premiere at Elberfeld on March 30, 1904, under Fritz Cassirer, achieving three performances. It was not revived until 1935 when Beecham presented it at Covent Garden.

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