"Nobody knows what color I am": Time, Music, and Race in Kris Defoort’s The Time of Our Singing (2020)

Abstract

In 2020, Belgian composer Kris Defoort (b.1959) completed his fourth opera, The Time of Our Singing, based on the homonymous novel by Richard Powers (2003). This article examines how Defoort’s The Time of Our Singing contributes to decolonialising opera by adopting Homi K. Bhabha’s postcolonial concept of “third space”. After identifying the three central themes in Powers’s novel, the contribution analyses how their adaptation in Defoort’s opera contributes to the construction of the opera as such a third space. An examination of the opera’s reception and the Belgian racial context from shows how these elements shaped the interaction between Defoort’s composition and the world beyond the opera stage.