British opera house halts 'blackface' practice

The British Royal Opera House has officially stopped using black face paint on white opera singers portraying black characters.

Mezzo Stephanie Blythe stepped on stage on the opening night Thursday for the opera Un Ballo in Maschera (A Masked Ball) without the black face paint she had been using in rehearsals.

"It doesn't work. It's racially insensitive," said Christopher Millard, the opera's spokesperson.

The decision to relinquish the practice of using "blackface" came soon after a blistering article from novelist Philip Hensher in the Independent newspaper. It criticized the opera for the practice. Hensher had attended a dress rehearsal.

Millard points out singers sometimes use gloves and veils to hide their skin colour if it's different from that of the character they are playing.

He says operas that call for black characters are rare and it's unlikely the issue will come up in the next few years. Millard says the opera house already has a list of operas it will be performing for the next couple of years, none of which has a black character.

Using "blackface" was common in the U.S. for almost 100 years from the first minstrel shows in the 1840s. Civil rights activists complained about it during the 1940s and eventually, it went out of vogue.

Minstrel shows have been widely criticized for depicting black people as unintelligent, naive caricatures.

In Britain, The Black and White Minstrel Show, a TV variety show featuring actors in blackface, ran from 1957 to 1978.