When exploring the history of Black women singers, far too often the discussion fails to look beyond blues, jazz, or R&B—forgetting (or ignoring) the contributions of classically trained vocal artists. Yet opera and the classical concert stage, despite largely white audiences—including an American era of “whites only”—have always been enriched by the contributions of Black divas.
Some of the key figures in that history are now receiving their due, though in several cases, no recordings of their performances exist.
Join me in exploring their classical music and their stories.
Black Music Sunday is a weekly series highlighting all things Black music. With over 150 stories (and counting) covering performers, genres, history, and more, each featuring its own vibrant soundtrack, I hope you’ll find some familiar tunes and perhaps an introduction to something new.
I could not have pulled this story together without the resources found at Afrocentric Voices in “Classical” Music.
Afrocentric Voices in “Classical” Music was launched in February 1998 by soprano and researcher Randye Jones. The site started small, with a handful of biographies on musicians such as composer H. T. Burleigh and contralto Marian Anderson as well as a bibliography of relevant music resources. However, since Afrocentric Voices moved to its current domain in December 1999, it has seen the addition of several features, including the 2001 addition of a chronology of achievements by African American vocalists, composers and publishers, and a gallery of pictures of internationally renowned African American singers and composers of vocal music, which has now become a Pinterest page that shares the name Afrocentric Voices.
When Afrocentric Voices first opened, there was no other site that focused on the accomplishments of African Americans on the opera or concert stage. Fortunately, other researchers have also taken on the task of spreading the word about these historic and contemporary musicians. Additionally, more living musicians are taking advantage of the Internet to share their own histories with us all. Therefore, Afrocentric Voices has begun selecting biographical subjects whose careers have not yet received the level of recognition online they richly deserve.
Kudos to librarian, researcher, and soprano Randye Jones for the work she has done making this history available.
The first woman listed in the chronology at Afrocentic Voices is soprano Elizabeth Taylor Greenfield.
1853 – Elizabeth Taylor Greenfield (ca. 1824-1876), known as the “Black Swan,” makes her New York debut at the Metropolitan Hall. Because African Americans are denied admission to the concert, she gives an additional performance at the Broadway Tabernacle.
In 2017, The Conversation profiled Greenfield, calling her “America’s first Black pop star.”
In 1851, a concert soprano named Elizabeth Taylor Greenfield embarked on a national tour that upended America’s music scene.
In antebellum America, operatic and concert songs were very popular forms of entertainment. European concert sopranos, such as Jenny Lind and Catherine Hayes, drew huge crowds and rave reviews during their U.S. tours. Lind was so popular that baby cribs still bear her name, and you can now visit an unincorporated community called Jenny Lind, California.
Greenfield, however, was different. She was a former slave. And she was performing songs that a burgeoning field of American music criticism, led by John Sullivan Dwight, considered reserved for white artists. African-American artists, most 19th-century critics argued, lacked the refined cultivation of white, Eurocentric genius, and could create only simple music that lacked artistic depth. It was a prejudice that stretched as far back as Thomas Jefferson in his “Notes on the State of Virginia” and was later reinforced by minstrel shows.
But when Greenfield appeared on the scene, she shattered preexisting beliefs about artistry and race.
Musician and blogger Emily E. Hogstad at Song of the Lark provides more details about Greenfield’s life. A white woman named Elizabeth Greenfield inherited slaves, but converted to Quakerism and freed them. One of those freed slaves was a baby, also named Elizabeth; like many slaves, her exact date of birth is unknown. Baby Elizabeth was raised in the elder Elizabeth’s home in Philadelphia.
Young Elizabeth attended a Quaker school, and taught herself “guitar, harp, piano, and voice.” The elder Elizabeth died in 1845 and left a small bequest for her Black namesake in her will, but the funds didn’t go to her after the will was disputed by relatives. Out of necessity, Greenfield turned to teaching music, and then to performance.
I was struck by this description of her critical reception:
On her tour, Greenfield startled her wealthy white audiences by her choice of repertoire. She avoided minstrel songs that played into dehumanizing stereotypes and instead sang operatic selections from Donizetti, Bellini, Verdi, and other European composers, as well as ballads and hymns. To show off her extraordinary range (roughly three and a half octaves), she would often sing parts written for men and women, which both amazed and unnerved her listeners. As was customary for the era, she would feature other performers on her recital program, in addition to an accompanist, but she also frequently sang and played piano simultaneously.
Reviewers didn’t know how to process this performer who moved so fluidly between worlds: black and white, rich and poor, educated and self-taught, male and female, slave and free. Many articles covering her tour were unqualified raves. But another common reaction was disbelief or scorn, especially of her appearance. One Detroit newspaper wrote, “The Swan is a plain looking, medium sized, woolly headed, flat nose negro woman, and no one would suppose there was any more enchantment…in her than a side of leather.” Many male critics hit upon a particular solution: they closed their eyes so they could enjoy her talent while avoiding the work of reconciling that talent with their own preconceived notions about her identity. “Upon the suggestion of another, we listened to her without looking toward her during the entire performance of ‘The Last Rose of Summer’ and were at once and satisfactorily convinced that her voice is capable of producing sounds right sweet.”
Sopranos Alicia Waller and Marielle Murphy created the Sopranos Without Borders YouTube channel in April 2020. Last month, they featured Greenfield in one very interesting, well-sourced episode. It’s just five minutes long and worth a watch.
Following in Greenfield’s footsteps was Sissieretta Jones. Jones was born in 1868 or 1869 in Portsmouth, Virginia, and died in 1933.
PBS’ American Masters’ Unladylike2020 series told her story in June 2020. At just 11 minutes, incorporating Jones’ own words, and narrated by actress Julianna Margulies, it’s a great watch.
Unladylike2020 also provides a written profile of Jones. It’s got a lot of the info, if not the music, found in the video.
Sissieretta Jones was born Matilda Sissieretta Joyner in 1868 in Portsmouth, Virginia, just after the end of the Civil War. Her father, a pastor, had been born into slavery; her mother was a washerwoman. In 1876, the family moved to Providence, Rhode Island, where her father had been offered a ministerial position. Jones began singing in the church choir at an early age, and her path to stardom began there. She later said that, “after singing a solo at a Sunday-school concert, some people said to my mother, ‘the child sang a High C; you should let her learn music.’” How Jones paid for music school is unknown, but it is well documented that she attended the Providence Academy of Music where she received formal vocal training. In 1883, at age 15, she married a hotel porter named David Jones, and soon thereafter the couple had a daughter, Mabel, who died as a baby.
In 1886, Jones pursued additional vocal training in Boston, and then began touring music halls throughout the Northeast. She was soon hired by a white manager as the lead vocalist of the Tennessee Jubilee Singers, performing arias, gospel, and popular tunes. In 1888 and 1890, the group toured the Caribbean to packed, racially-mixed concert halls. The second tour was managed by an all-Black team, including Jones’ husband. On these tours, heads of state and other dignitaries gifted Jones numerous medals and precious jewels, and pinning them across her chest became a part of her signature look when performing.
In the United States, Jones became known as the “Black Patti” — a comparison to Italian opera star Adelina Patti. The name was likely given to Jones by one of her managers who thought it would help to promote her career. She did not approve of the epithet but it stuck throughout her career.
When we talk about “opera,” we often forget that George Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess is an opera, and the woman who created the expanded role of Bess was a Black soprano named Anne Wiggins Brown.
Randye Jones wrote Brown’s biography for Afrocentric Voices.
Soprano Anne Wiggins Brown was born on August 9, 1912, in Baltimore, Maryland. (This year, rather than 1915, was confirmed by the singer herself.) Her father, Dr. Harry F. Brown, was a prominent physician and grandson of a slave. Her mother, Mary Wiggins Brown, was of African, Cherokee and Scottish-Irish ancestry. She and her three sisters were active in the musical and theatrical life of the racially segregated community. Brown described her early musical training:
I was always with music. My mother played and sang and she taught her four daughters very much about music. She was my first vocal teacher. In those days there was not much that an African-American could do in the theatre, except roles as a servant or something. I thought about being an opera singer but there also was the same difficulty. In those days the Metropolitan didn’t have any African-American singers.1
Brown’s parents tried to enroll her in an area Catholic school, where they hoped to foster her musical talents. However, the school refused to admit an African American. After confronting similar discrimination years later when she applied to the Peabody School of Music, Brown was admitted to Morgan State College in Baltimore and attended Teachers’ College, Columbia University. She continued her classical vocal studies with Lucia Dunham at the Institute of Musical Art at the Juilliard School. Brown became the first African American to win Juilliard’s prestigious Margaret McGill scholarship.
Here’s a short audio clip of Brown in Porgy and Bess.
From the YouTube notes:
"Introduction" and "Summertime"From the Opera, "Porgy and Bess"Music by George GershwinLyrics by Du Bose Heyward and Ira Gershwin
Featuring Anne Brown, soprano, Accompanied by the Decca Symphony Orchestra
Directed by Alexander Smallens
Recorded May 15, 1940 Decca 29067A
George Gershwin's "American Folk Opera" Porgy and Bess opened on Broadway on October 10, 1935, in the middle of the Great Depression and closed after only 124 performances on January 25, 1936. In May 1940, Decca Records assembled some of the members of the original cast, including Todd Duncan and Anne Brown, who had played the title characters, for a recording session that produced a 78 rpm album of selections from the score.
Anne Wiggins Brown (born Annie Wiggins Brown August 9, 1912 - died March 13, 2009) was an African American soprano who created the role of "Bess" in the original production of George Gershwin's folk opera Porgy and Bess in 1935. She was also a radio and concert singer. She settled in Norway in her 30's and later became a Norwegian citizen.
Independent filmmaker Nicole Franklin directed and produced 2010’s Gershwin & Bess: A Dialogue with Anne Brown.
In 2004 at her home in Oslo, Norway, soprano Anne Wiggins Brown sat down with tenor Dr. William A. Brown (no relation) of the Center Black Music Research for an on-the-record conversation about originating the iconic role of “Bess” in the opera Porgy and Bess with famed composer George Gershwin. Revealed are little known facts about what is arguably the most popular American opera touring to date.
The film is pretty much only marketed to educators, but here’s a short excerpt, where Brown recalls how she secured her audition for Gershwin—and ultimately, the role of Bess—while still a student at Juilliard.
Franklin attempted to produce another film, Meet Bess. Here’s the 2013 fundraising trailer for the project, which looks to have been set aside for now.
Born a little more than a decade after Anne Brown, and into very different economic and social class circumstances, was Mary Violet Leontyne Price. Randye Jones writes about her beginnings:
Mary Violet Leontyne Price was born February 10, 1927, and raised in the colored section of Laurel, Mississippi. Her mother, Kate, was a midwife, and her father, James, worked in a sawmill. Both parents were musicians, her mother sang with the local Methodist church choir and her father played tuba in the church’s band. Young Leontyne’s mother arranged for a local music teacher to begin piano lessons with the child at age 3. Leontyne was nurtured under the watchful eye of the community, which extended even to her aunt’s employers, The Chisholms, a family who lived in a white, affluent section of town. Her musical talents were encouraged, and her voice frequently was heard at area social events.
At age nine, young Leontyne’s mother took her to Jackson, Mississippi, to hear Marian Anderson in concert. Years later, Price recalled her impressions of seeing Anderson perform, “She came out in a white satin gown, so majestic. And opened her mouth, and I thought, ‘This is it, mama. This is what I’m going to be.'”
Price received a scholarship to attend Central State University, Wilberforce, Ohio. She began as a music education major, but she completed her studies there in voice. After hearing Price perform at an earlier engagement, famed bass-baritone Paul Robeson agreed to appear in concert in Dayton, Ohio, to raise money to support Price’s continued vocal studies.
David Collins at Musician’s Guide picks up her story after Price moves to New York to attend Juilliard.
With living expenses so high in New York City, Price for a time feared that she would have to follow the path of some of her friends and take a job singing in blues clubs and bars, which would have been a little like Michelangelo working as a housepainter. But Elizabeth Chisholm, a longtime family friend from Laurel, came to Price's rescue with generous patronage, and the young singer was free to study full-time under vocal coach Florence Page Kimball. "It was simply the Midas touch from the instant I walked into Juilliard," Price told Opera News . "I learned things about stage presence, presentation of your gifts, how to make up, how to do research, German diction, et cetera." From Kimball, she went on to add, Price learned the steely control which would allow her to perform at top voice over so many performances, "to perform on your interest, not your capital. What she meant was, as in any walk of life, there should be something more to give."
Price thrived at Juilliard, and her role as Mistress Ford in a student production of Verdi's Falstaff caught the eye of composer Virgil Thomson, who cast her in a revival of his opera Four Saints in Three Acts, Price's first professional experience. This in turn led to a two-year stint (1952 to 1954) with a revival of Gershwin's Porgy and Bess, which toured the U.S. and Europe. During this time Price married her co-star in that opera, William C. Warfield. The marriage was a disappointment, however, and the two divorced in 1973 after years of separation.
In 1954 Price made her concert debut at New York's Town Hall, where she exhibited great skill with modern compositions; a magnetic performer, she enjoyed the concert format and continued to tour regularly throughout her career, much to the chagrin of opera purists. Fast becoming a darling of the New York critics, Price soon saw her career take off. In 1955 she appeared in Puccini's Tosca on NBC television, thus becoming the first black singer to perform opera on television. And she was so well received that she was invited back to appear on NBC telecasts of Mozart's Magic Flute (1956), Poulenc's Dialogues of the Carmelites (1957), and Mozart's Don Giovanni (1960).
Sopranos Without Borders offers a video history.
From the YouTube notes:
Mary Violet Leontyne Price has garnered nearly every accolade in the classical music and opera realm. As a Black woman raised in Mississippi at the height of Jim Crow segregation, she took up the mantle of those who came before her and conquered the countless obstacles she encountered due to racial bias. Consequently, Ms. Price smashed the glass ceiling in a manner that hasn't been seen since.
UPDATE: This video incorrectly asserts that George Gershwin heard Ms. Price in the opera 'Four Saints in Three Acts,' when it was in fact his brother, Ira Gershwin. Many thanks to our community for alerting us to this oversight!
Here’s audio of Price’s Metropolitan Opera debut on Jan. 27, 1961:
And from the Met’s own website: “Leontyne Price: A Legendary Met Career”
Metropolitan Opera audiences began an extraordinary love affair with American soprano Leontyne Price immediately upon her debut on January 27, 1961. She was by then an internationally heralded singer and an experienced, refined musician and artist. But more than anything, it was the sheer beauty of her voice that excited her listeners. What they heard was a vibrant, glowing, yet never metallic tone that called forth adjectives like velvety, soft-grained, and elegant. Her vocal production seemed effortless, free, and soaring, with plentiful volume and an amazing dynamic control. And the timbre of her voice was unique, personal, and immediately identifiable—she sounded like no one else. At the age of 90, in a charming interview for the documentary film The Opera House, she commented on her own voice, remembering when she heard the reverberations for the first time in the new Met auditorium, saying, it was “so beautiful you just wanted to kiss yourself!” This was not a prima donna’s vanity, but a mere statement of fact. And the audiences wanted to kiss her too, for hearing Leontyne Price live was an experience not to be forgotten.
Price was a known entity by the time of her Met debut. She had been brought to the attention of General Manager Rudolf Bing as early as 1952 when the young Juilliard graduate starred in a touring company of Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess that also played on Broadway. Her vocal qualities had drawn critical admiration, and in 1953 she was invited to sing “Summertime” for a radio broadcast Met fundraising event, held at the Ritz Theater. Her growing career in Europe included debuts at the Vienna State Opera, London’s Royal Opera, the Salzburg Festival, and the Verona Arena. It was at the last of these that Bing heard her as Leonora in Il Trovatore and offered her a contract backstage afterwards, together with her co-star, tenor Franco Corelli.
Price’s Met debut, again as Leonora, met with critical approval as well as sensational public success. From Harold Schoenberg’s New York Times review: “Her voice, warm and luscious, has enough volume to fill the house with ease, and she has a good technique to back up the voice itself. She even took the trills as written, and nothing in the part as Verdi wrote it gave her the least bit of trouble … Voice is what counts, and voice is what Miss Price has.”
She truly was a legend.
Non-opera goers and opera fans alike will love her performance of “The Lord’s Prayer” on The Ed Sullivan Show in 1961, sung in an amazing lower register.
In 1981, Robert Jacobson, the editor of Opera News, conducted this absorbing interview with Price for the Kennedy Center.
Last year, Jason Victor Serinus, wrote “The Essential Leontyne Price” for SF Classical Voice.
What isn’t essential about soprano Leontyne Price (born Feb. 7, 1927)? As the end of Black History Month approaches, with Price just having celebrated her 95th birthday, her central position as the first African American soprano to achieve international recognition remains indelible in the consciousness of all classical music lovers, freedom lovers, and students of American history.
[...]
But let’s return to Price in her first prime. For those wishing to know what all the fuss was about, start with the famous “blue album,” Leontyne Price, that assembles arias from all her signature, encore-worthy roles in one place. Recorded 1959–1960 with the Rome Opera Orchestra conducted by Oliviero de Fabritiis and Arturo Basile, it presents her as Aida, Butterfly, Tosca, Leonora (Il trovatore), Magda (La rondine), and Liù (Turandot). Savor her bubbly, almost frothy vibrato on high and notes whose sheer sensuality, sheen, and beauty have never been equaled on record.
Give it a listen.
All careers in music ultimately come to an end; Price would hold her last performance at the Met on Jan. 3, 1985, and Donal Henahan covered it for The New York Times.
THE farewell appearances of great singers are generally exercises in patience for their admirers. Happy to say, last night's performance of ''A"ida'' at the Metropolitan, billed in the program as ''Leontyne Price's farewell to opera,'' might just as well have been entitled ''Patience Rewarded.'' The 57-year-old soprano took an act or two to warm to her work, but what she delivered in the Nile Scene turned out to be well worth the wait. In her most taxing aria, ''O patria mia,'' there were powerful reminders of the Price that we remember best and want to remember, a Price beyond pearls. It was, intermittently but often enough to make the evening a memorable event, the singing of an artist of distinctive vocal timbre and personality.
It was a sentiment-soaked evening from the start, studded with long, affectionate ovations and curtain calls that Miss Price bathed in luxuriously while ''Live From the Met'' television cameras recorded the occasion from virtually every corner of the house. Her handling of the prolonged outbreak of approval at the conclusion of ''O patria mia'' was nothing less than a master class in the art of the diva. She rang all the classic changes, from the hands held up in prayerful gratitude, to the uplifted then downcast eyes, to the ultimate stroke of sinking to a knee. The audience made clear that it loved every masterly gesture, too. It had come primed to cheer the artist on the occasion of her 193d Metropolitan performance (44 as Aida) and let her know they appreciated her career. The celebration at the end of the evening went on for 25 minutes, which adds up to a lot of cheering, bouquet throwing and confetti strewing.
Here is that final song, “O patria mia.:
Before closing, as a sidenote, I wanted to mention that Ms. Price also happens to be the cousin of Dionne Warwick, as well as Cissy and Whitney Houston.
Forgive me for ending here. I do realize I haven’t covered singers like Marian Anderson, Camilla Williams, Shirley Verrett, Grace Bumbry, Kathleen Battle, Jessye Norman, or newer, rising operatic stars like Angel Blue. So I implore you to join me in comments for more—and please be sure to post your favorites.