The Breakers’ Hidden History Inspired a Composer to Explore His Family’s Newport Past

Curtis Stewart will premiere The Gilded Cage on July 22 at the Breakers. (Photo by Marilena Arvelo)

Curtis Stewart’s memories of Newport are similar to those shared by the thousands who’ve flocked to the city over the years.

Growing up in Manhattan, the musician and composer heard stories of his father’s childhood in Newport and visited the area for a fishing trip with friends. Later, as an adult, he’d travel there for the Newport Jazz Festival.

But the Bellevue Avenue mansions, those bastions of Gilded Age wealth that set Newport apart from so many seaside communities, were beyond his realm of exploration. When the Newport Classical Music Festival commissioned him to write a piece to debut at the Breakers this July, he initially struggled to find a personal connection with the venue.

“I try to always find some type of personal connection with whatever piece I’m writing and also wherever I happen to be writing for,” he says. “I think personal connections in classical music are something that we really haven’t always embraced. Things have to feel like they have this historic greatness or detachment.”

For inspiration, he turned to his father’s stories of growing up in Newport as a boy. Stewart’s grandfather was a pitcher in the Negro Leagues and often traveled for games, so his father was brought up by his great-grandfather, a Baptist minister. For a time, his great-grandfather served at Mount Zion AME Church in Newport, connecting the family with the local community.

“I was thinking about the fact that the Breakers at one point were mostly empty. They didn’t have people in them. So there must have been people around the town who were taking care of them,” Stewart says. “I was thinking about the people of my dad’s church that he grew up in when I was thinking about it in relationship to the Breakers and who gets remembered — the people who take care of the place, or the people who owned it?”

The Breakers was built in 1895 for Cornelius Vanderbilt II and his wife, Alice Claypoole Vanderbilt. The massive structure served primarily as a summer home and featured forty-eight bedrooms for family and staff. The house continued in the Vanderbilt family until 1972, when the Preservation Society of Newport County purchased it to maintain it for historical use.

By an arrangement with the organization, members of the Vanderbilt family continued living on the third floor of the building into the twenty-first century. However, in 2018, the Preservation Society determined the building was no longer fit for residential use and announced the last remaining Vanderbilts would depart the property, a controversial parting that played out in national publications. Jamie Wade Comstock, a Vanderbilt descendant, publicly decried the change.

“Visitors will soon find that the gilded cage was much more interesting when it still had the birds inside it,” she said at the time.

The Breakers. (Courtesy of the Preservation Society of Newport County)

For Stewart, the comment raises questions of who truly enlivened Newport’s most opulent homes — the owners who spent a small portion of their time there, or the everyday Newporters who kept the properties running year-round?

“Which birds in the gilded cage were they referring to — the people who took care of the place, or the people who were there from time to time?” he says.

“I can imagine old buildings that maybe weren’t a part of the community at one point getting overrun with nature or foliage or vine,” he adds. “This mansion got not overrun, but taken over by the community that it was a part of. It was forced to become part of the community.”

As he composed the piece, Stewart incorporated one of his favorite Baptist hymns, “Precious Lord,” further cementing his father’s connection with the Mount Zion AME Church into the music. The piano quintet begins harshly, with heavy chords emulating a “cage-like” environment, he says, and gradually introduces gentler piano fragments signifying others moving through the mansion.

“Hopefully it comes to a feeling of rest and peace between the more harsh and abstract chords of a caged environment and accepting all the people who have moved through that space,” he says.

The piece reflects the reality of Newport in the late 1800s and early 1900s, when the once bustling seaport became a playground for wealthy families fleeing New York’s summer heat. Though best known for its mansions, Newport during the Gilded Age was home to a thriving middle class of entrepreneurs who capitalized on the influx of wealthy visitors in need of services and goods. As explored in the June 2023 issues of Rhode Island Monthly, African American families, in particular, found new business opportunities in the remaking of Newport as a resort destination.

The Gilded Cage will premiere at the Breakers on Saturday, July 22, as part of the Newport Classical Musical Festival. Beginning in 2021, the organization has commissioned a new piece each summer reflecting on local history. Previously commissioned pieces were inspired by the Castle Hill Lighthouse and by Newport Gardner, a prominent Newport resident and musician who was formerly enslaved.

“Newport Classical is committed to the future of classical music and working closely with composers like Curtis, who are shaping it,” says Newport Classical Executive Director Gillian Friedman Fox. “During his residency with us this summer, he will collaborate with our wonderful resident festival artists. When we learned of Curtis’ personal family connection to Newport, we were even more thrilled to have engaged him.”

In addition to The Gilded Cage, the program curated by Stewart will include selections by Schumann, Bruch and Shostakovich. The composer says he hopes the new piece encourages its audience to reflect on the historical narrative.

“When we look at history, you see there’s all this information and all these facts, and then you suddenly start to see these stories emerge,” he says. “I hope that the music itself brings a feeling to that sense of history-keeping in addition to just the facts and the verbal narrative around it.”

To learn more about the Newport Classical Music Festival or purchase tickets, visit newportclassical.org.

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