Givonna Joseph / Recensioner

Givonna Joseph is bringing opera to a new audience and also bringing the works by people of color, nearly erased from history, back into the spotlight.

Givonna, the audience at the Jazz and Heritage Festival took great delight in your entire presentation. You always look like you're having so much fun onstage -- people pick up on that. With your ebullience, verve and sass, you end up changing people's view of opera as stiff or dull. It was great exposure for you and your group OperaCreole); but the audience in (and outside!) the tent were the true beneficiaries. They came away with an unexpected pleasure -- hearing a group honor culturally-rich, historically-significant music but also deliver the goods by collaborating with a local legend, such as John Boutte, on a song from the recent past. You won them over. Sometimes that is the best kind of pleasure for an audience -- to be thoroughly entertained by something they had not expected. Lynette Johnson