Ewel Cornett

Ewel Butler Cornett Jr. (January 10, 1937 – 2002) was an American actor, director, producer, and composer whose career spanned Broadway, regional theater, opera, and musical composition. Born in Louisville, Kentucky, he was the second son of Ewel Butler Cornett and Nettie Lyle Crawford. As a young man he sang in the choir at Crescent Hill Baptist Church and appeared in summer amphitheater productions across Kentucky, among them Paul Green's The Stephen Foster Story in Bardstown and Wilderness Road in Berea. He graduated from Atherton High School in 1954 and enrolled at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, where he studied first as an art major before shifting to voice performance. A member of the university's music honors fraternity, he took on lead roles in Benjamin Britten's opera The Rape of Lucretia, as Tarquinius, and in productions of Carousel and Othello. He earned a Bachelor of Music degree in 1959 and relocated to New York City to pursue acting.

Cornett's Broadway career included an appearance in Camelot in 1963, and he remained active on stage and on tour through the mid-1960s. He played Sir Lionel in the second national tour of Camelot in 1963–1964, during which he also understudied the role of Lancelot. His touring and stock credits encompassed Prince DeLong in The Unsinkable Molly Brown, Al in The Most Happy Fella opposite Dorothy Collins, Debeque in South Pacific with Betsy Palmer, and Monsieur Bougne in Irma La Douce with Genevieve. Off-Broadway, he appeared as Windy and Prime Minister in Meet Peter Grant alongside David Hartmann, and played Wilder while serving as musical director for A Trip to Chinatown, a production that featured Marvin Hamlisch. In regional theater he performed at Actors Theatre of Louisville, where he played Ephraim in Desire Under the Elms and El Gallo in The Fantasticks, and at Pittsburgh Playhouse, where his credits included Mr. Peachum in Threepenny Opera and Captain Jim in Little Mary Sunshine. He also worked as actor, director, and producer at venues including the Papermill Playhouse in New Jersey, the Mineola Playhouse on Long Island, Meadowbrook Dinner Theatre, Pocono Playhouse, and the Ogunquit Playhouse.

As a lyric baritone, Cornett performed for the New England Opera Theatre under Boris Goldovsky and for the Illinois Opera Theatre in productions of Rigoletto, La bohème, Don Giovanni, and Don Pasquale. He performed Stravinsky's Oedipus Rex with Leonard Bernstein for the television program Omnibus, and appeared in Menotti's The Labyrinth and Bach's St. Matthew Passion for NBC-TV Opera. His television directing credits included Chekhov's The Boor and the Christmas special A Village Christmas, both produced for CBS affiliates in Louisville.

Growing disillusioned with the conditions facing actors in New York, Cornett returned to Louisville and in 1964 founded Actors, Inc., a regional repertory theater. Its inaugural season included productions of The Glass Menagerie, John Brown's Body, and Rashomon, which received critical recognition. When Actors, Inc. merged with Richard Block's Theatre of Louisville in 1965 to form Actors Theatre of Louisville, Cornett served as co-producer and co-director alongside Block. Following a dispute with the board of directors, Cornett submitted an ultimatum and the board voted narrowly to retain Block, resulting in Cornett's resignation from the organization he had helped establish.

Cornett subsequently moved to West Virginia, where he served as producer and director of Theatre West Virginia from 1968 to 1980. He first produced the outdoor drama Honey in the Rock, performed annually at the Cliffside Amphitheatre at Grandview Park, and in 1970 composed the music for Hatfields and McCoys, written by Billy Edd Wheeler. That production premiered on June 20, 1970, at the amphitheater at Grandview State Park in Beckley, West Virginia, with descendants of both families present in the audience. During his tenure at Theatre West Virginia he also produced and directed the first two seasons of Young Abe Lincoln, an outdoor musical drama by Wheeler, as well as Paul Green's Trumpet in the Land, and the world premiere of Wheeler's Mossie and the Strippers in 1979. He additionally directed productions for the organization's Children's Theatre program, including Androcles and the Lion, The Emperor's New Clothes, The Firebird, and Alice Underground. In 1982 he served as Executive Director of the West Virginia Italian Heritage Festival in Clarksburg.

For the Kentucky Opera, Cornett directed a wide range of productions including Rigoletto, Cosi Fan Tutte, Madama Butterfly, Hansel and Gretel, Tosca, West Side Story, The Most Happy Fella, and La bohème, among others. As a composer he created thirteen works for musical theater. His collaborations with Billy Edd Wheeler included Honey in the Rock (1967), Hatfields and McCoys (1970), Bar'bry and Willie (1977), The Glass Christmas Tree (1983), and What a Way to Go (1994). He also composed music for Dionysus and Company (1974), with text by John Benjamin and John O'Creagh, and for a stage adaptation of Cinderella (1985) drawn from the Brothers Grimm by Moses Goldberg. His unpublished compositions include the tone poem Hatfields and McCoys, performed by the Wheeling Symphony Orchestra in 1970, the musical John Brown (1979) with Wheeler, and John Brown's Body (1964) after Stephen Vincent Benet, as well as folk songs, art songs, and solo piano pieces.