The Darktown Opera--The Serenade: "Come lub come de moon am in de sky."

The late nineteenth-century Darktown prints by Currier & Ives depict racist stereotypes that are offensive and disturbing. The Metropolitan Museum of Art preserves such works to shed light on their historical context and to enable the study and evaluation of racism.

This print caricatures Black (African American) people at an opera performance At the center of a candle-lined stage, a thin, young Black man--wearing a yellow hat with a long red plume, a Renaissance-style blue/yellow short-pants costume, yellow tights and pink slippers -- plays a banjo as he sings to a Black young lady in the window of a makeshift wooden wall at right. The viewer sees the upper part of her body in a low-cut, light blue, sleeveless dress; she also wears a white glove on her left hand and flowers adorn her hair. In the background, a painted set shows a full moon shining in the sky above a stone wall. Musicians are in the orchestra pit in the foreground: a portly, bald conductor (shown from behind) is at center; at left, there is a bass player and a boy playing a triangle; at right a flutist and tuba player. The audience is shown at right and left in wooden boxes. At left, a portly elderly man naps in his upper level box; in the box below, a woman in a pink dress peers at the singer through a long telescope, while a young man stands behind her to watch. At right, three lanky men in formal dress stretch out of their boxes to watch the action on stage. The title and the caption (for the singer's lyrics) are imprinted beneath the image.

Nathaniel Currier, whose successful New York-based lithography firm began in 1835, produced thousands of prints in various sizes that together create a vivid panorama of mid-to-late nineteenth century American life and its history. People eagerly acquired such lithographs featuring picturesque scenery, rural and city views, ships, railroads, portraits, hunting and fishing scenes, domestic life and numerous other subjects, as an inexpensive way to decorate their homes or business establishments. As the firm expanded, Nathaniel included his younger brother Charles in the business. In 1857, James Merritt Ives (the firm's accountant since 1852 and Charles's brother-in-law) was made a business partner; subsequently renamed Currier & Ives, the firm continued until 1907.