Black Tell Revisited: Thomas Gartmann in Conversation with the Composer Charles Uzor

Abstract

For the Swiss National Exhibition in 2002, the Swiss Arts Council Pro Helvetia commissioned various composers to create an opera pasticcio. Not only were representatives of the four national languages invited, but also Charles Uzor, a Nigerian who had come to St. Gallen as a displaced child and had studied in Bern and Zurich and at the Royal Academy in London. He called his contribution Black Tell or The Other Switzerland, Interludes and Finale for solos, choir, chamber orchestra and tape. His parts of the pasticcio were conceived as intermezzi in a kind of soap opera, favouring exaggeration and clichés. This interview investigation is carried out from different perspectives: that of the commissioning body, that of the organisers (who wanted to present Switzerland as open and cosmopolitan) and that of the composer; we must also consider that there is now a distance of over 20 years between us and the work’s first performance.