With a score that incorporates elements of jazz and negro spirituals, The Emperor Jones was the eleventh American opera to premiere at the Met, and has continued to be performed into the 21st century, albeit rarely.

[1] When the vocal score was complete, Gruenberg showed it to the Austrian conductor Erich Kleiber, who at the time was music director of the Berlin State Opera and known for championing new works.

[2] (Two years later, Kleiber resigned from his post at the Berlin Opera in protest at the Nazi policy of banning Entartete Musik, "degenerate music", a label applied to virtually all works by Jewish composers).

Initially the Met had wanted to use white dancers in black makeup, but backed down when Tibbett threatened to quit the production unless Winfield and his troupe performed.

[5] Although it is a two-act opera, the Met performed it without an interval for a total running time of one hour and fifteen minutes and presented it as the first half of a double bill with Leoncavallo's Pagliacci.

Despite the mixed reviews, The Emperor Jones enjoyed a fair amount of initial success and won Gruenberg the Bispham Memorial Medal Award for opera in English.

[6] The Teatro dell'Opera in Rome performed it in 1951, and Michigan Opera Theatre staged a major revival in 1979 with African American baritones Andrew Smith and David Arnold in the title role, conducted by Robert Willoughby Jones.

After its last performance at the Metropolitan Opera House in February 1934, it was not seen again in New York City until 2001 when it was revived by a small company, Operaworks, in a 55-seat theatre using a digitized virtual orchestra in place of musicians with baritone Fredrick Redd in the title role.

[7][8] In 2009, the opera was revived in Italy for two performances at the Teatro delle Muse in Ancona with Nmon Ford in the title role and a full orchestra and chorus conducted by Bruno Bartoletti.

[9] Setting: An unnamed island in the West Indies in the early part of the 20th century A chanting chorus calls for the death of Emperor Jones and an insistent drumbeat is heard in the distance.

Brutus Jones, an African American ex-Pullman porter, gambler, and escaped convict had stowed away from the United States to an island in the West Indies several years previously.

Full of bravado, Jones tells Smithers of the power which he has held over the island and that he has convinced the natives that he can only be killed by a silver bullet which he wears around his neck on a chain.