NPR World of Opera
A Mother’s Desperate Act: ‘Margaret Garner’
Bruce Scott
In pre-Civil War America, few slave stories were more compelling than Margaret Garner’s. She and her family were owned by a Kentucky plantation farmer, but one night they escaped to Ohio with another group of slaves.
Their hiding place was discovered, and Margaret’s family was surrounded. She swore she would kill her children and herself rather than return to slavery. As her husband was dragged off, Margaret plunged a knife into her daughter. She was preparing to kill her other daughter and herself when she was seized and jailed.
Margaret was put on trial. Abolitionists wanted her tried for murder, which would have set a number of precedents, including establishing an enslaved person’s rights and responsibility regarding her own children. Instead, Margaret Garner was accused of destruction of property, and sent back into slavery, along with her husband.
Her story advanced the rift between the abolitionists and the defenders of slavery, a rift that would soon help lead to the Civil War.
Grammy Award-winning composer Richard Danielpour and Nobel Prize-winning novelist Toni Morrison collaborated to bring this true life story to the operatic stage. Margaret Garner was co-commissioned by opera companies in Detroit, Cincinnati and Philadelphia and made its ebut in May 2005 at Michigan Opera Theatre in Detroit.