Marian Anderson (1897-1993)
Mon coeur s’ouvre à ta voix
(sung in English)
Samson et Dalila
by Camille
Saint-Saëns
I have met Marian Anderson twice; one time after a concert and the
other after a lecture. I attended a concert she gave at
Wheaton College in the mid 60s. She was
past her prime, but still gave an incredibly moving
performance. The house was packed . . . chairs set up in the orchestra
pit and on the stage. She was literally surrounded by
the audience. In a gracious gesture, for
one song she turned her back to the main audience in order
to sing to those seated behind her on the stage.
She wore a gown with a richly embroidered cape-like affair; like a big exotic
butterfly, as I
remember. It probably sounds as if
it looked ridiculous, but in fact it was stunning.
I recall particularly her performance of Schubert’s “Erlkönig”.
It sent shivers up my spine. She portrayed the characters
in the little story in a truly remarkable way. Even now,
after all these years, I am still moved whenever I hear
recordings of her singing. Her rendition of Schubert’s
“Ave Maria” invariably brings tears to my eyes.
Marian Anderson grew up in Philadelphia, where
she received her vocal training through the financial support of her
church. After winning a contest in New York and performing with the New York
Philharmonic,
she was
signed to a contract by a concert manager, but her career
went nowhere. (My guess is that a black concert artist
had little chance of getting concert dates in “serious”
halls in the US.) She opted to go to Europe in 1930, touring Scandinavia
and Western Europe. In Salzburg,
in 1935, she gave a recital attended by
by Toscanini, Bruno Walter and Lotte Lehmann. It was on this
occasion that Toscanini remarked, “A voice like yours is heard
once in a hundred years.” The Archbishop of Salzburg reportedly
was moved to tears by her singing of “Ave Maria”.
Miss Anderson soon returned to the USA and performed her
historic homecoming recital at Town Hall, organized by
Sol Hurok. In 1939, she sang at the Lincoln Memorial. The
story goes that the DAR would not allow a person of
color to perform in “their” Constitution Hall; to be fair,
however, I should note that the good ladies of the DAR maintain that the
hall had already been booked, so it was not possible for
Miss Anderson to perform there on that day.
She made her (belated) debut at the Metropolitan Opera in
1955, twenty years after taking Europe by storm. She was the first black
singer to perform at the Met.
In 1966 she received the Freedom Medal.
For her Met debut, she sang the role of Ulrica in
Un Ballo in Maschera.
The (studio)
recording that was made to mark the event, with
Zinka Milanov, Jan Peerce and Leonard Warren, is of special
interest not only because it documented Anderson’s debut at the
Met, but also because of Milanov’s musical blunder in the
second act trio (the rhythm threw her, and she got
off by a beat). I could not believe that Milanov would allow
RCA to release a studio recording with such an obvious mistake.
You can hear Anderson singing Ulrica’s aria — just click on this shortcut.
And now, here is a parting quote about Marian Anderson, by Sol Hurok:
In any century only a handful of extraordinary men and women are
known to countless millions around the globe as great artists
and
great persons. Only a few inspire the adoration
and respect of the mighty and the humble alike. In our time
there is Marian Anderson.
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