Marian Anderson

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Marian Anderson,
photograph by Carl van Vechten , from the Van Vechten Collection of the Library of Congress , January 14, 1940
Marian Anderson at her concert at the Lincoln Memorial

Marian Elina-Blanche Anderson (born February 27, 1897 in Philadelphia , Pennsylvania , † April 8, 1993 in Portland , Oregon ) was an American opera singer with an alto voice .

Life

Marian Anderson, the daughter of an ice cream and coal merchant and a teacher, sang in the Baptist church choir of Philadelphia when she was six . However, she only received proper musical training from the age of 17. One of her teachers was the alto and mezzo-soprano Mme. Charles Cahier . In 1925 she won first prize in a singing competition from among 300 applicants and was then allowed to perform with the New York Philharmonic Orchestra . In the early 1930s she went on a European tour and performed in places like Berlin , London and Paris as well as in Spain , Poland , Italy , Latvia and Russia . Among other things, before the monarchs of Norway , Sweden , England and Denmark . The composer Jean Sibelius and the conductor Arturo Toscanini , who conducted several concerts for her, praised her voice as the talent of the century. When the conductor Bruno Walter performed the solo part for her - an African American woman - for a Vienna concert of Brahms' Alto Rhapsody on June 17, 1936, he received a death threat. The concert took place anyway.

In 1939, the conservative women's association Daughters of the American Revolution ("Daughters of the American Revolution") prevented a planned stage appearance by Anderson in the Constitution Hall of Washington, DC because of their skin color. Thereupon Eleanor Roosevelt , wife of the then President Franklin D. Roosevelt , resigned from the organization in protest against this racial discrimination . The Roosevelts then organized an open air concert in front of the Lincoln Memorial on Easter Sunday, April 9, 1939 , attended by around 75,000 people.

On January 7, 1955, Marian Anderson appeared as Ulrica in Verdi's opera Un ballo in maschera as a soloist at the Metropolitan Opera in New York City as the first African-American singer.

In 1957, Marian Anderson was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences . In 1958 she represented the USA as an envoy to the United Nations . In 1961 she sang the national anthem during the inauguration of John F. Kennedy as a sign of the intended equality of African Americans . In 1963, Kennedy awarded her the Presidential Medal of Freedom . In 1965, Marian Anderson ended her career and lived secluded with her husband, the architect Orpheus Fischer, on a farm in Connecticut . In 1970 she was awarded an honorary doctorate from Michigan State University . In 1978 she received the Gold Medal of Honor of the US Congress and the Kennedy Prize , in 1986 the National Medal of Arts and in 1991 the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award for her life's work.

Marian Anderson was also a notable song singer . Her piano accompanist was the German-American pianist Franz Rupp from 1940 to 1965 .

The Marian Anderson House bears her name.

literature

  • Marian Anderson: My Lord, What a Morning. To Autobiography . University of Illinois Press, Urbana, Ill. 2002, ISBN 0-252-07053-4 , (reprinted New York 1956 edition).

Web links

Commons : Marian Anderson  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ George Jochnowitz: Bruno Walter: A World Elseware , review of the book by Erik Ryding and Rebecca Pechefsky, accessed on August 25, 2015
  2. ^ Robert Dallek: John F. Kennedy. An unfinished life. Special edition of the Deutsche Verlagsanstalt, Munich 2006, ISBN 3-421-04233-0 , p. 279
  3. ↑ List of honorary doctorates from Michigan State University ( memento of the original from July 3, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / research.msu.edu
personal data
SURNAME Anderson, Marian
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Anderson, Marian Elina-Blanche (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American opera singer with an alto voice
DATE OF BIRTH February 27, 1897
PLACE OF BIRTH Philadelphia , Pennsylvania
DATE OF DEATH April 8, 1993
Place of death Portland , Oregon