Mattiwilda Dobbs

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Mattiwilda Dobbs (1955)

Mattiwilda Dobbs (born July 11, 1925 in Atlanta , Georgia ; † December 8, 2015 ) was an American opera singer with a soprano voice .

Life

Dobbs received music lessons as a child, played the piano from the age of seven and sang in the choir at church concerts. Dobbs attended Spelman College and initially studied singing in her hometown of Atlanta. She then continued her training from 1946 to 1950 with Lotte Lehmann in New York and then from 1950 to 1952 with Pierre Bernac in Paris . In 1947 she received the Marian Anderson Award for young black singers. In 1947 she began her singing career, initially exclusively as a concert singer, with a concert in Mexico City . In 1951 she won the International Singing Competition in Geneva .

In 1952 she made her stage debut at the Holland Music Festival in the opera Le rossignol by Igor Stravinsky . In 1953 she appeared at La Scala in Milan as Elvira in the opera L'italiana in Algeri by Gioachino Rossini . From 1954 to 1956 she sang at the Glyndebourne Festival , including the Zerbinetta in Ariadne auf Naxos in 1954 and Konstanze in Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's singspiel Die Entführung aus dem Serail in 1956 . In October 1953 she made her debut at Covent Garden Opera in London as Waldvogel in Richard Wagner's Siegfried . In January 1954 she sang the Olympia in Hoffmann's stories there . In May 1954 she performed with great success in the opera Der goldene Hahn by Nikolai Rimski-Korsakow . Further guest appearances took place there in the 1955/1956 and 1959 seasons.

After Marian Anderson was the first black woman to appear once at the Metropolitan Opera in New York in 1955 , Mattiwilda Dobbs became the first African-American singer to appear regularly at this house. Dobbs was a permanent member of the Metropolitan Opera from 1956 to 1964. She made her debut there in 1956 as Gilda in Giuseppe Verdi's opera Rigoletto . In 1959 she had great success there as the Olympics. Other roles were Konstanze, the page Oscar in Un ballo in maschera , Zerlina in Don Giovanni and the title role in Lucia di Lammermoor .

From 1961 to 1963 she was a member of the Hamburg State Opera . There she made her debut at Easter 1961 as Olympia. In May 1963 she appeared at the Vienna State Opera as Zerbinetta.

She also made guest appearances at the Bolshoi Theater in Moscow (1959), at the San Francisco Opera (1955), at the Théâtre de la Monnaie in Brussels (1954), at the Teatro Comunale in Florence (1961) and from 1957 to 1973 regularly at the Royal Stockholm Opera and at the Drottningholm Festival . In 1974 she retired from the opera stage. She worked as a singing teacher, initially as a visiting professor, from 1972 to 1974 at Texas University in Austin , from 1975 to 1976 at the University of Illinois , 1976 to 1977 at the University of Georgia and from 1977 to 1991 at Howard University in Washington .

Dobbs was married twice. Her first husband Luis Rodriguez died in 1954. In 1957 she married the Swedish journalist, screenwriter and actor Bengt Janzon in New York and moved with him to Sweden, where she lived until 1973. In her coloratura soprano, which is recorded on some of the recordings, one admired the brilliant technique and the expressive presentation.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ In Memory of Mattiwilda Dobbs Janzon. In: hm-patterson-son-oglethorpe-hill.tributes.com. Retrieved December 9, 2015.
  2. ^ Mattiwilda Dobbs (b.1925). Biography in: New Georgia Encyclopedia.
  3. ↑ International who's who in music and musicians' directory. P. 162.
  4. ↑ Mattiwilda Dobbs Janzon b.1925. Biography of Mattiwilda Dobbs
  5. ^ Variety in Repertoire at Glyndebourne. Performance review In: The Glasgow Herald, June 28, 1954 (available on Google Books)
  6. ^ Opera's most promising negro voice. In: Jet. October 8, 1953, pp. 60–62 (available online at Google Books)
  7. ↑ Black Olympia from New York Mattiwilda Dobbs, star of the "Met", at the State Opera in "Hoffmanns Erzählungen" . ( Memento from December 17, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) In: Hamburger Abendblatt from March 29, 1961.
  8. ^ Index of roles by Mattiwilda Dobbs in: Chronik der Wiener Staatsoper 1945–1995 . Anton Schroll, Vienna / Munich 1995, ISBN 3-7031-0698-0 , p. 341.
personal data
SURNAME Dobbs, Mattiwilda
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American opera singer
DATE OF BIRTH July 11, 1925
PLACE OF BIRTH Atlanta , Georgia , United States
DATE OF DEATH December 8, 2015