Jan Schmidt-Garre has made four films since the 1992 biopic of Sergiu Celibidache (8/09), all of them musical in theme and subtle in direction. The latest follows Anne-Sophie Mutter and Sofia Gubaidulina as they work on her new violin concerto, In tempus praesens. His previous film of 2000, reissued here, explores a potentially explosive topic with open-ended sympathy. John Ardoin is credited as script-writer, but the history of black singers overcoming racism and prejudice is mostly told by the singers themselves, Shirley Verrett, Reri Grist and Grace Bumbry in particular, and if George Shirley and Simon Estes are outnumbered, then Shirley’s rhetorical question offers a pointed explanation: if you’re not bothered by Zinka Milanov singing Aida, why is the idea of him singing a French nobleman still uncomfortable?

The film’s tour of the issues such as what makes a black voice allows for a brief excursion on what might make a black opera: the debate over Porgy and Bess is crystallised by Edward Said, for whom it’s “condescending”, and Bobby McFerrin, with his praise for Gershwin’s attempt to “understand the black experience”. The extracts are too brief to give pleasure in themselves (and it’s a shame they are unsubtitled), except for Marion Anderson singing “Ave Maria” at Christmas 1939 and Jessye Norman as Strauss’s Ariadne, both lit from within by unshakeable technique and faith in their own powers of communication. Norman and Leontyne Price have probably been the most visible representatives of black voices in opera, and the film perhaps loses a little authority without their personal witness. In compensation, we see Price dedicating her appearance in 1982 at the convention of the ballgowned and beribboned Daughters of the American Revolution to the memory of Anderson, whom the convention had infamously shunned in 1939.

The film ends on a downbeat, with Paul Robeson’s eloquent fury at being forbidden to travel outside the US for his communist sympathies and “Anti-American” activities. By declining invitations to star at the great opera houses, Robeson chose not to be a standard-bearer for Black participation in the temples of White culture – a role left to Price in particular – but became the fulcrum to unite issues of racial, class and cultural equality. The path to those temples is rockier now than it was in the age of the black diva. Back in 1999, Verrett hopes that “the Metropolitan can get back to the place that it was”. Whatever they tried hasn’t worked: Nicole Cabell is the sole singer of African-American ancestry scheduled to take a lead role at either the Met or Chicago Lyric Opera in the 2009-10 season.