Singing the Lament of a Fugitive Slave

graves_denyce.png(Photo: Devon Cass)
By MATTHEW GUREWITSCH [NY Times, 2 September 2007]
IN the fall of 2002 the composer Richard Danielpour was in residence at the American Academy in Berlin, orchestrating the first act of his first opera, ìMargaret Garnerî but still awaiting the words for the final scenes. For weeks, in calls to Princeton, N.J., he had been hounding his librettist, the Nobel Prize-winning novelist Toni Morrison, who would answer quietly: ìGood things take time. You have to wait.î