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History > USA > Civil rights
Breaking the color barrier > Music
Maria Anderson 1897-1993
The contralto Marian Anderson (1897-1993) had a rich career singing concerts, and in 1955 broke the color barrier for soloists at the Metropolitan Opera.
Photograph: Carl Van Vechten Collection Getty Images
Marian Anderson: A Voice of Authenticity and Justice A new box set explores the singer whose Lincoln Memorial concert was a 20th-century civil rights milestone. NYT Nov. 5, 2021
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/05/
When the Daughters of the American Revolution would not allow her to sing at Constitution Hall, Anderson received permission to give a concert on the steps on the Lincoln Memorial in 1939.
Photograph: Hulton Archive/Getty Images
Marian Anderson: A Voice of Authenticity and Justice A new box set explores the singer whose Lincoln Memorial concert was a 20th-century civil rights milestone. NYT Nov. 5, 2021
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/05/
Maria Anderson 1897-1993
Anderson grappled with hardships in her youth, especially the death of her father following a severe head injury while selling ice and coal at a train terminal, leaving a wife and three daughters.
Just 12 at the time, Anderson, the eldest, was forced to delay high school for several years and take odd jobs.
Her beloved grandfather — who was born enslaved in Virginia and, once freed, became a farm laborer and the first Anderson to settle in Philadelphia —
died the following year.
These events stayed with her as she learned to confront every challenge with affecting dignity.
Was this the source of what I’m calling authenticity?
It’s hard to say.
But it surely accounts for her identification with spirituals — repertory she sang on every recital she gave, and works she invested with the same care she brought to German art songs.
Several of the recordings in the new set offer her in affecting performances of spirituals.
There are also collections of Christmas carols; an album titled “Songs of Eventide”; and more.
Anderson’s way of confronting racism had been to offer herself as a model of Black excellence, rather than speaking out explicitly about politics.
But by the 1950s, a new generation of activists began challenging segregation more directly.
In 1951, the N.A.A.C.P. called for a boycott of a recital she was to give in Richmond, Va., because the audience was to be segregated.
The action worked: Three-quarters of the seats in the hall were empty.
And soon after, Anderson became more outspoken and vowed not to appear before segregated audiences. (The roiling social, racial and political currents that affected her life and career are presented in an insightful documentary, “Voice of Freedom,” broadcast earlier this year and part of PBS’s American Experience series.)
There was one more milestone to come.
In 1955 Anderson broke the color barrier for soloists at the Metropolitan Opera, singing the small but crucial role of the fortune teller Ulrica in Verdi’s “Un Ballo in Maschera.”
In earlier years, European houses had approached her about performing in opera, but she declined, having had no opportunity to learn the repertory or develop her acting skills.
But as the civil rights movement gained headway in America, Rudolf Bing, the Met’s general manager, realized that the company had to respond.
He wanted an artist without controversy to be the first.
And by then, who didn’t admire Marian Anderson?
She was very hesitant.
But, after some encouraging work with opera coaches, she decided to proceed; received $1,000 per performance, the highest fee at the house at the time; and came to embrace her pioneering role.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/05/
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/05/
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