Anne Brown

Anne Brown

Anne Wiggins Brown (born August 9, 1912 in Baltimore , Maryland , † March 13, 2009 in Oslo , Norway ) was an American opera and operetta singer ( soprano ).

Life

The African American Brown, which was rejected by the Catholic school of their hometown because of their skin color and also at the Peabody School of Music underwent racial discrimination, visited the Morgan State College in Baltimore and the Teachers' College of Columbia University and eventually became vocal student of Lucia Dunham at the Juilliard School of Music . She was the first black American woman to receive the school's prestigious Margaret McGill Fellowship .

During her studies, she applied to George Gershwin for a role in his opera Porgy (the final title Porgy and Bess was only created in the course of their collaboration), who decided to cast the role of Bess with her. She premiered at the Alvin Theater in New York with Todd Duncan (Porgy), Edward Matthews (Jake), Abbie Mitchell (Clara), John Bubbles (Sportin 'Life) and Ruby Elzy (Serena) , among others .

Brown then received roles in DuBose Heyward's Broadway operettas Mamba's Daughters and La Belle Hélène . In 1941 she sang the soprano part in Beethoven's Ninth Symphony with the NBC Symphony Orchestra under Leopold Stokowski . In the following years she toured the USA, where she performed songs by Brahms and Schubert and Spirituals by Harry Burleigh .

In 1946 Brown appeared with Todd Duncan in the production of Porgy and Bess at the Royal Copenhagen Opera. She toured Europe, performed with the London Philharmonic Orchestra and finally settled in Norway, where she married the ski jumper and author Thorleif Schjelderup in 1948 . From Norway she went on concert tours through Europe, Asia and Latin America. In 1950 she appeared in Norway in the operas The Medium and The Telephone by Gian Carlo Menotti . For the main role in The Consul she received the music critic award.

A progressive asthma disease forced her to give up her career as an active singer, and from 1953 she began to work as a singing teacher and opera producer. In 1967, a Norwegian production of Porgy and Bess was created under her direction . In 1979 her autobiography was published under the title Sang Fra Frossen Gren . Brown returned to the United States for the first time in 1985 for the performance of Porgy and Bess at the Metropolitan Opera on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the premiere. In 1998 she attended the Gershwin 100th Anniversary Celebrations at the Library of Congress ; in the same year she received the George Peabody Medal for Outstanding Contributions to Music in America from the Peabody Institute. In 2004 Nicole Franklin directed the documentary Gershwin, Norway, & The Artists' Libido: A dialogue with Anne Brown about her .

Web links

• Anne Brown in the Internet Movie Database (English)
• Anne Brown in the African American Registry
• Randye Jones: Anne Wiggins Brown ( b.1912 ) . In: Afrocentric Voices in Classical Music