When Sean Gibson was first approached by a musician wanting to write an opera about his great-grandfather, he was a little skeptical.
“I remember talking to my family, thinking, ‘How’s that gonna work?” Sean said. “'Cause you look at the opera, you think of old ancient things, Italian singers, not too many operas about African Americans.”
Sean’s great-grandfather is Josh Gibson. Many considered him to be one of the greatest hitters in baseball history.
In Pittsburgh, he played for the Negro League teams, the Homestead Grays and Pittsburgh Crawfords. Records from those days are inconsistent, but some estimate Josh Gibson hit more than 800 home runs in his career, before he died in 1947.
Sean said, after mulling over the opera offer, it occurred to him: Josh’s life was anything but ordinary, and a tribute to him should be just as unique.
“This is not a traditional opera story,” Sean said. “This is more of a sports story, a Pittsburgh story, an African American history story.”
The show features a nearly all-black cast.
Sean also contacted composer Daniel Sonenberg, who had originally pitched the idea, and "The Summer King" was born.
That was in 2007. This week, "The Summer King" will be performed for the first time by the Pittsburgh Opera.
Scoring Tragedy
Sonenberg said while composing "The Summer King," he thought about Josh as a Moses-like figure, who led the way toward integration in professional baseball. Josh died of a brain tumor at 35, months before Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier with the Brooklyn Dodgers.
“Josh’s experience kind of stands for the entire Negro League experience,” Sonenberg said. “He was really symbolic of that first thing that had to happen before there could be a Jackie Robinson.”
Negro League teams were especially strong in Pittsburgh, which was the only city to have two ball clubs. Josh started with the Grays, but also played for the Crawfords, as well as teams in Mexico and Central America. Sonenberg said "The Summer King" visits all these places, including the historic Crawford Grill in the Hill District and sandlots on the North Side.
From these various locations, Sonenberg said he tried to add distinct styles like jazz and mariachi to match where Josh was playing. But as Josh’s life declined, he crafted emotion into the libretto.
“I was drawn to Josh as a tragic figure and I knew that there was going to be some very intense music later in his life,” Sonenberg said.
Josh’s tragedies were not limited to his early death. In August of 1930, about a month after Josh played his first game with the Grays, his wife, Helen Mason, went into premature labor. She was pregnant with twins, a boy and a girl, and did not survive the birth. Many trace the incident to the origination of Josh’s mental health struggles.
“He checked himself into a sanatorium several times,” Sonenberg said. “One of the most memorable images for me in my early research was people saying they had overheard him having imaginary conversations with Joe DiMaggio, and I know that was something that had to happen in the opera.”
Inviting All To Celebrate A Hometown Hero
When "The Summer King" debuts, the songs may be familiar to some Pittsburghers. The Pittsburgh Opera promotes free community events, which included a preview of "The Summer King," to introduce a new audience to Josh’s life and encourage attendance to the full show.
Sean Gibson said he wants to break stereotypes about the opera, and include people who might not otherwise feel drawn to the style.
“You don’t have to have a lot of money, you can dress casually, you can come in jeans and a button-down shirt,” Gibson said. “I’m just trying to really give them a better understanding of what the opera is about.”
The community events, however, were somewhat daunting for Alfred Walker, who plays the lead role of Josh Gibson in "The Summer King." Walker said, for the most part, he has a great time exposing a new audience to the opera, but it can be nerve-wracking playing Josh Gibson in his hometown.
“I’ll come on stage, you know, playing this Pittsburgh hero, so it’s going to be challenging and it’s a little scary, but at the same time, I take integrity in and what I do,” Walker said. “So I’ll jump in with both feet.”
Walker said his ultimate takeaway in playing Josh was that he should have been the first baseball player to break the color barrier. He said Josh was “born a couple years too soon.”
While Josh has since been inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame—the second black player after pitcher Satchel Paige—and commemorated throughout Pittsburgh and the baseball community, he still was shut out from big league play based on his race.
“Josh didn’t really fail,” Walker said. “Society failed him.”
"The Summer King" is the first world premiere in the Pittsburgh Opera’s 78 year history. It opens Saturday, April 29 at the Benedum Center downtown.
