Camilla Williams, 1st black singer to appear with major US opera company, dies at 92
INDIANAPOLIS — Camilla Williams, believed to be the first African-American woman to appear with a major U.S. opera company, has died. She was 92.
Williams died Sunday at her home in Bloomington, her attorney, Eric Slotegraaf, said Monday. She died of complications from cancer, said Alain Barker, a spokesman for the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music, where Williams was a professor emeritus of voice.
Williams’ debut with the New York City Opera on May 15, 1946, was thought to make her the first African-American woman to appear with a major U.S. opera company and came nearly nine years before Marian Anderson became the first African-American singer to appear at New York’s more prestigious Metropolitan Opera.
In her City Opera debut, Williams sang what would become her signature role, Cio-Cio-San, in Puccini’s “Madama Butterfly.” She displayed “a vividness and subtlety unmatched by any other artist who has assayed the part here in many a year,” according to a New York Times review of the performance.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/obituaries/camilla-williams-1st-black-singer-to-appear-with-major-us-opera-company-dies-at-92/2012/01/30/gIQAiFFdcQ_story.html
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thank you so very much for posting that, Blue_Tires.
