Museum of the African-American Diva Quiz

Answer: Elizabeth Taylor-Greenfield

Most of the background information on the singers as well as all quotes are from Rosalyn M. Story's book, "And So I Sing: African-American Divas of Opera and Concert".

Who could have ever imagined that there existed a classically trained singer from the ante-bellum American South? There was, and apparently, she had a rather unusual voice, powerful from her low to high range, earning her a comparison to the 'Swedish Nightingale' Jenny Lind.

Elizabeth and her parents were the property of a wealthy landowner named Elizabeth Holiday Greenfield. She had estates in Louisiana and Mississippi and stocks in banks in Mississippi and Pennsylvania. She moved to Philadelphia shortly after Elizabeth's birth and freed her parents, giving them enough money to establish a home in Liberia. Elizabeth remained with her mistress in Philadelphia, who set up a trust for Elizabeth's mother and arranged for Elizabeth to receive $100 a year for the rest of her life, along with a $500 bequest! Thus was she able to pursue her passion for music. She was 20 before performing in public, and moved to western New York after her benefactress' death.

Hallmarks of her career include making her New York City debut on March 31, 1853 for a crowd of 4,000. Because of segregation, she had to repeat her performance later that day, the second time for a black audience who were not allowed in the hall at the same time as the previous white audience. After studying with Sir George Smart, organist and composer to Queen Victoria's Chapel Royal in England (where she also met Harriet Beecher-Stowe who described her voice in a very favorable light), her singing became more refined and Greenfield performed for Queen Victoria in Buckingham Palace on May 10, 1854. Greenfield eventually returned to Philadelphia, where she continued to give concerts and set up her own private teaching studio. Before her death in 1876, however, she helped one of her students, tenor Thomas Bowers, to obtain a professional singing career. He, in turn, taught others.

Answer: Marie Selika

Selika's signature piece was Mulder's "Staccato Polka", which showed off her solid two-octave range (from Middle C to High C) and her deftness at ornamentation. She was reportedly the first black singer to sing at the White House for Rutherford B. Hayes - some 10 years before the next prima donna. Like Greenfield, she also sang for the Queen of England in 1883.

How unlikely that the small town of Natchez would produce two great sopranos of color; it must be the water! Details about Selika's birth and early life are not reliable, as she supposedly traveled from Mississippi to Ohio (where her voice attracted a wealthy family who arranged for her instruction), San Francisco (where she studied with Giovanna Bianchi), Chicago (where she had a coach named Farini), then finally to the East.

Her husband was baritone Sampson Williams, and they traveled the European capitals together. She was perhaps more successful than her predecessor because she apparently did not look "black in earnest", as a reporter had once said. She was fair complexioned, and had straight hair. Selika returned to Ohio in 1893 after being abroad, and continued to concertize. She and her husband moved to Philadelphia, where Williams died in 1911. Though she retired from the concert stage in 1916, she began teaching at the Martin School of Music in Harlem. She died in New York in 1937 at the age of 87.

Answer: Sissieretta Jones

According to Story, the post-Civil War era in which Sissieretta Jones rose to prominence "was not the best time to be black." Sure, it was acceptable for blacks to be musical during slavery; as a result, there is a huge library of spirituals (folk music) that are attributed to American slaves. But being trained in classical music was an entirely different matter and very much discouraged.

Sissieretta Jones was born Matilda Sissieretta Joyner in Portsmouth, VA on Jan. 5, 1869, an only child of an ex-slave, Jeremiah Malachi Joyner and his wife Henrietta. An Afro-Methodist minister, he took his wife and daughter to Rhode Island in 1876 to accept a call to ministry there.

Sissieretta married David Richard Jones in Sep. 1883 (yes, when she was 14!). They had one child who died in infancy, and divorced sometime between 1893 and 1898. Richard's gambling, inability to keep a job, love of money, and reckless spending were doubtless some of the factors that led to the divorce.

She began studying privately at the New England Conservatory of Music in nearby Boston and was coached by Luisa Cappiana of New York when she was 18. Early performances include having sung for a crowd of 5,000 at Boston's Music Hall. She made her New York debut in 1888. It was not until her performance with the Colored Jubilee which received over 75,000 audience members in New York that she came to be taken seriously. At 23, she performed for President and Mrs. Benjamin Harrison in 1892. She was later a regular guest for entertaining Washington dignitaries, including Presidents Cleveland, McKinley, and Theodore Roosevelt. Yet, Patti, to whom she was compared, received no less than a whopping $4,000 nightly before she eventually retired to her Welsh castle. Jones, the 'Black Patti', on the other hand, barely received more than $300 an engagement even though she had toured and sung in France, Germany, and England (even singing a recital at the Covent Garden Opera House!). She died bankrupt and forgotten/confused with another diva of color in her own country.

Answer: Flora Batson

Batson's career began in Providence's black churches, much like Jones's. She was singing professionally by the age of 13. She attracted the attention of a white concert manager, J.G. Bergen, who hired her to star in his Tennessee Star Concert company. It was a successful touring company that had among its roster baritone Harry T. Burleigh and soprano Sissieretta Jones at some point. Bergen took more than a musical liking to her, as the two were married on Dec. 13, 1887. Having her white husband as her manager greatly helped her career and she was soon singing all over the country and the world. Just like her predecessors, she became the black version of established white sopranos; a New York paper called her the 'colored Jenny Lind', while a Chicago paper called her the 'Patti of her race'. As Jones was also called the 'Black Patti', this may have led to Batson being confused with Jones.

She toured the world three times, singing for Queen Victoria, Pope Leo XIII, Queen Lil of Hawaii, and New Zealand's royal family. Unfortunately, she and Bergen separated in 1896. She died on Dec. 1, 1906.

Answer: Anna Madah and Emma Louise Hyers

Anna Madah was a soprano that the New York Evening Post said possessed a "flexible voice of great compass, clear and steady in the higher notes". The same writer praised sister Emma's contralto as "a voice of great power and depth". The sisters had studied with opera singer Josephine D'Ormy as children.

They made their professional debut at the Metropolitan Theatre in Sacramento in 1867 and began their first tour in 1871. After singing arias from "Linda di Chamounix" in Salt Lake City, the press admired Anna's 'effortless' high E-flat, her 'bird-like trills', and Emma's dark, rich timbre. Their father engaged other singers, sometimes expanding the ensemble to a trio or quartet.

They eventually headed East and performed in Steinway Hall in New York. A successful Boston appearance in 1872 propelled them to form their own concert company in 1875. Including drama in their act, Joseph B. Bradford wrote "Out of Bondage" specifically for them in 1876. They performed it until the mid-1890s. They began to appear separately after that. Emma died shortly after the turn of the century; Anna traveled to Australia to perform. She returned to her Sacramento home in the early 1900's, where she retired.

Answer: Emma Azalia Hackley

Hackley was born in Tennessee in 1867. As a young soprano studying at the University of Denver, she began her career by giving recitals in Colorado and Detroit. After her 1901 Colorado debut, she toured for some time, then organized a 100 voice People's Chorus in Philadelphia. She then studied with the renowned Polish tenor Jean de Reszke for a year in Paris, then returned to Philadelphia.

Hackley did her best to revive the diminishing presence of the black vocal artist at the turn of the century. She continued to educate talented young black singers and established a scholarship fund for assisting them in 1908. Her school for training these singers was called the Vocal Normal Institute. She traveled around the country, lecturing and organizing large choruses in major cities, using their best black singers. Unfortunately, she collapsed and died while on tour in California in 1922.

Answer: Marian Anderson

Of course, one does not think of the humble and shy Marian Anderson as a diva, but she was certainly one of the greatest. Just by coincidence, that humble act of singing on the steps of Lincoln's Memorial proved to be one of the greatest acts in history for singers of color. The Daughters of the American Revolution who owned Constitution Hall had placed a ban on non-whites performing in that hall since 1932. They refused to lift that ban when it was requested in 1939 that Ms. Anderson sing there, after having lived and performed abroad with great success for a decade. Violinist Jascha Heifetz, having performed in the Hall at the height of the controversy, told the Washington Star: "I protest as the entire musical profession protests against such a sad and deplorable attitude. To think that this very hall in which I played today has been barred to a great singer because of her race; it made me feel ashamed that there could be such a situation in Washington."
First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt resigned from the D.A.R citing the ban against Anderson as the cause. It was Ms. Anderson's manager, the ingenious Sol Hurok, who suggested the steps of the Lincoln Memorial as an alternative to Constitution Hall.

Story says that Anderson "was decorated by presidents" (she was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by Lyndon Johnson in 1963), "admired by kings, honored by universities, and, at a crucial period in history, embodied the hopes and spirit of an oppressed people with unparalleled dignity". Her all too late 1954 debut at the Metropolitan Opera of New York in the role of Ulrica in Verdi's "Un ballo in maschera" was merely a symbolic statement that the greatest operatic institution in America was at last opening its doors to a black singer, as Ms. Anderson was at the end of her singing career. Nonetheless, most of the tickets were sold weeks in advance, and a line began forming at 5:30 am on the morning of January 7 for the remaining few still available for this momentous occassion.

Answer: Dorothy Maynor

Maynor's grandfather was a Baptist minister; her father, John G. Mainor (this is the correct and original spelling of the last name), was a Methodist clergyman. Though surely unexpected, a career in classical vocal music was the natural step after having sung in church choirs since her childhood. She was sent to the Hampton Institute (in Hampton, VA; now Hampton University) at 14, where she studied economics and fashion design and concentrated on teaching. She joined the Institute's choir as an alto and was overlooked. After three years of being in the shadows, she sang a solo at Carnegie Hall when the choir toured because the original soloist was indisposed. This eventually led to her winning a scholarship to attend the Westminster Choir College in Princeton, NJ where she studied choral conducting, after studying with Nathaniel Dett, the Hampton Institute choir director, for four years. The Dean of Women at Hampton, Harriett Curtis, raised funds to sponsor private voice lessons for her in New York. So in 1936, off to the Big Apple she went.

In August 1939, she sang for Serge Koussevitzky, conductor of the Boston Symphony (now the Tanglewood Festival). He was so impressed that she sang with his orchestra the next day, and her career was launched. The New York Times said that her soprano voice had "startling powers". She then debuted at Town Hall that same year, giving three encores, one of which would be her signature piece, "Depuis le jour" from Charpentier's "Louise". Now that she had the blessing of the New York press, her fee jumped overnight from $150 to $1500 a performance.

She married Rev. Shelby Rooks in 1942. After he suffered a heart attack in 1963, she retired from singing and began plans for establishing the Harlem School of the arts. It still stands today along St. Nicholas Ave. between 141st and 143rd Streets. She was the first black American to sit on the board of the Metropolitan Opera in 1975. She retired from teaching in 1979 and relinquished the School's leadership to mezzo-soprano Betty Allen.

Answer: Carol Brice

Brice soon moved to Sedalia, North Carolina after being born in Indianapolis in 1918. Both her mother, a history teacher, and father, a congragational minister, sang. Her brothers Jonathan, who would later become her accompanist, and Eugene, were also active musically. Mrs. Galen Stone, a wealthy Beacon Hill Bostonian who later became her benefactress heard her sing as a child and secretly invested $1 million in Brice's career.

She was selected to sing on a program celebrating FDR's third inauguration in 1941. By 1944, she had gone from recitals in black colleges' halls to major recital halls across the country. She won the Naumburg Foundation Competition and was selected to sing for a coast-to-coast NBC broadcast with the Kansas City Philharmonic. The foundation gave her a debut recital in Town Hall in March 1945. After Koussevitzky presented her in Boston, she went on to record De Falla's "El amor brujo" and Mahler songs, and frequently appeared with Koussevitzky and the Boston Symphony. She died in Norman, Oklahoma in 1985, where she and her second husband had settled, after being on the music faculty of the University of Oklahoma since the 1970's.

Answer: Mattiwilda Dobbs

So how does a black Georgia-born soprano end up in Milan to sing opera? She was born in Atlanta in 1925, the second youngest of six girls. Her father was a railroad clerk. She began studying the piano when she was seven. She entered Spelman College and studied voice with Naomi Maise and Wilis James. She graduated as valedictorian then went to Columbia University in New York City and studied with Lotte Leonard. While there, she won the Marian Anderson Award and scholarships to study at the Mannes School of Music and Berkshire Music Center. She traveled to Paris to coach with Pierre Bernac as a John Hay Whitney Opportunity Fellow. She won the top prize in an international competition in Geneva and later was signed by Sol Hurok after he heard her in Paris.

She sang mainly with orchestras in Europe, appearing first at La Scala in 1953 then in an opera house in Genoa. While performing at Glyndebourne, she was summoned to sing Rimsky-Korsakov's Queen of Shemakhan (from "The Golden Cockerel") for Queen Elizabeth, Princess Margaret, and their guests. When she returned to the US, she made her American stage debut at the San Francisco Opera, stirring rumors that she would be the first black American to sing at the Met. She did not sing there until two years after Ms. Anderson, debuting and succeeding with the role of Gilda ("Rigoletto") in 1956. She continued with many more coloratura roles before returning to Europe. She returned to the States in the 1970s, accepting a teaching post with Howard University in Washington, DC. She was featured in the February '07 issue of "Opera News"

This brings our private tour to a close. Thank you for your kind attention. If you are interested in learning more, all of these women's names and pictures, plus much more (and men's) can be found on the Afrocetric Voices website at the following address: http://www.afrovoices.com/gallery/index.html