Camilla Williams, first black woman to appear in a leading role with a major American opera company

[Post Obits]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/music/camilla-williams-an-acclaimed-soprano-who-broke-racial-bounds-dies-at-92/2012/01/30/gIQA0QfedQ_story.html

[Lanskee Shuru]

On Jan 31, 9:47 am, Post Obits <newsob...@washpost.com> wrote:
> http://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/music/camilla-williams-an...

Opera is lethal.

[BobF]

On Tue, 31 Jan 2012 06:47:36 -0800 (PST), Post Obits
<news...@washpost.com> shouted from the highest rooftop:

>http://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/music/camilla-williams-an-acclaimed-soprano-who-broke-racial-bounds-dies-at-92/2012/01/30/gIQA0QfedQ_story.html

Camilla Williams, an acclaimed soprano who broke racial bounds, dies
at 92

By Emily Langer, Published: January 31

Camilla Williams, an acclaimed soprano who in 1946 became the first
black woman to appear in a leading role with a major American opera
company — in the title role of “Madame Butterfly” — and who sang the
national anthem at the 1963 March on Washington, died Jan. 29 at her
home in Bloomington, Ind.

She was 92 and had complications from cancer, according to Alain
Barker, a spokesman for Indiana University’s Jacobs School of Music,
where Ms. Williams taught for two decades before her retirement in
1997.


Ms. Williams, a native of southern Virginia, was considered a
matriarch among African American opera singers. During the first half
of the 20th century, opera houses had excluded black musicians, either
by relegating them to minor roles or refusing to book them at all.

On May 15, 1946, when Ms. Williams appeared on the New York City Opera
stage as the tragic Japanese geisha Cio-Cio-San of Puccini’s classic
opera — one of the most celebrated roles in the Italian repertoire —
classical music had reached a turning point.

“It’s impossible to overstate how important that was for . . . the
music scene in New York, for African American singers, and for
American singers,” F. Paul Driscoll, the editor-in-chief of Opera
News, said in an interview.

Nine years after Ms. Williams’s City Opera debut, contralto Marian
Anderson became the first black singer to perform at the Metropolitan
Opera. Anderson had drawn national attention in 1939 when, after being
turned away from Constitution Hall because of her race, she stood on
the steps of the Lincoln Memorial and sang “America” in a concert
heard by millions on the radio.

After Ms. Williams came American superstars such as Leontyne Price, a
mainstay of the Met during the 1960s and ’70s who is widely considered
one of the finest sopranos in history, as well as Shirley Verrett, who
was known in Italy as the “Black Callas.”

Ms. Williams’s performance in “Madame Butterfly” was hailed by New
York Times music critic Noel Straus as “an instant and pronounced
success.” She followed it with a string of appearances with the City
Opera in productions including Puccini’s “La Boheme” and Verdi’s
“Aida.”

In 1951, Ms. Williams sang the title female role in a Columbia Records
recording of “Porgy and Bess,” the folk opera with music by George
Gershwin and lyrics by Ira Gershwin and DuBose Heyward.

Those successes helped Ms. Williams launch an international career
studded by performances of “Madame Butterfly” in London and at the
prestigious Vienna State Opera.

At the March on Washington, when the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.
delivered the “I Have a Dream” speech, Ms. Williams was invited to
sing a spiritual. She also sang “The Star-Spangled Banner” when
Anderson got stuck in traffic.

“I ran up all the steps of the Lincoln Memorial and was out of breath
when I got to the microphone,” she recalled, according to a video
tribute made by Richard Glazier, a Gershwin scholar and friend of Ms.
Williams’s.

Ms. Williams did not achieve the fame of Anderson or Price, but she
lacked certain advantages that they enjoyed. Anderson had the backing
of the powerful impresario Sol Hurok (and in the case of the Lincoln
Memorial concert, first lady Eleanor Roosevelt). In contrast to Ms.
Williams, who had a lighter voice, Price had an instrument that was
both beautiful and stunningly powerful, capable of filling even the
most cavernous opera house.

--

"It's not that I'm afraid to die. I just don't want to be there when it happens." - Woody Allen

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