Probing the boundaries of opera as notated practice in South Africa: the case of Eoan

Opera as a form of cultural expression has been prospering in South Africa in diverse cultural environments for many years. In a number of instances "learning the notes" has taken place through oral transmission rather than based on a knowledge of Western staff notation. This article argues that staff notation and its canonisation in Western music is undermined in a non-Western context where opera unshackles itself from the strictures of "the score" through oral rather than written transmission. Examples hereof are diverse and various, and can be found in formal and informal practices of opera. I explore the example of opera production by the so-called coloured opera company, the Eoan Group that performed opera on a semi-professional level during the apartheid era and of whom it was known that many of its principal singers did not know staff notation. A description of how singers were taught their parts is followed by a comparison of a recording of "Questa o quella" from Verdi's Rigoletto by Eoan singer Joseph Gabriels (who learnt all his parts by rote) and an American singer Neil Shicoff who studied at Juilliard in New York. The article investigates whether one can hear in the actual performance that Gabriels could not read staff notation and if so, what this means.