“Roots and Branches” - Music - University of California, Irvine

1949 - Harry T. Burleigh Music Association (South Bend, Indiana)
1949 – William Grant Still’s three-act opera Troubled Island is produced by the New York
City Opera with Robert McFerrin in a starring role;
1950 – William Grant Still composes Costaso;
1950 – Zelma George performs in the Broadway production of Gian Carlo Menotti’s The
Medium;
1951 – William Grant Still composes the three-act opera Mota;
1952 – George Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess is revived for international touring with Leontyne
Price, William Warfield and Helen Thigpen in starring roles;
1953 – Soprano Mattiwilda Dobbs becomes the first African American performer at La Scala
– Milan, Italy, appearing as Elvira in L’italiana in Algeri;
1953 –Leontyne Price makes her debut in Paris, France, performing in Virgil Thomson’s
Four Saints in Three Acts;
1954 – Julia Amanda Perry composes a one-act opera, The Cask of Amontillado, staged by
Columbia University;
April, 1954 – Camilla Williams becomes the first African American performer with the
Vienna State Opera, performing in Madame Butterfly;
1954 – Vocal coach and accompanist Sylvia Olden Lee (1917 – 2004) is hired as a vocal
coach for the Metropolitan Opera;
January 7, 1955 – Marian Anderson makes her debut performance at The Metropolitan
Opera, performing the role of Ulrica in Giuseppe Verdi’s Un Ballo in Maschera;
1954 – Carmen Jones is filmed in 1954, starring Dorothy Dandridge (sung by Marilyn
Horne), Harry Belafonte (sung by LaVern Hutcheson), Joe Adams (sung by Marvin Hayes),
Pearl Bailey, Diahann Carroll, Brock Peters and Carmen DeLavallade;
1955 – Baritone Robert McFerrin makes his Metropolitan Opera debut, in Verdi’s Aida;
1955 – Mattiwilda Dobbs becomes the first African American to appear with the San
Francisco Opera
1955 - Ulysses Kay – composes The Boor ( a one-act opera adaptation of a play by Russian
dramatist Anton Chekhov);
1956 - Mattiwilda Dobbs makes her Metropolitan Opera debut in Rigoletto, thereafter
becoming the first African American singer to receive a long-term contract from the Met;
Karamu Theatre
Ulysses Kay – composes The Boor ( a one-act opera adaptation of a play by Russian
dramatist Anton Chekhov);
1957 – Leontyne Price stars in the NBC-TV opera performance of Dialogues of the
Carmelites;
1958 – William Grant Still composes the three-act opera Minette Fontaine;
1959 – Martina Arroyo makes her Metropolitan Opera debut, performing in Don Carlo;
1961 – Leontyne Price makes her Metropolitan Opera debut, performing in Il Trovatore;
July 24, 1961 – Grace Bumbry makes her Bayreuth Festival debut in Tannhauser;
1961 – Tenor George Shirley wins the Metropolitan Opera Auditions and makes his debut
with the company;
1961- 1971 – Alonzo Levister composes a two-act opera, Slave Song, with libretto by Oscar
Brown, Jr.;
1962 - 1972 – Ulysses Kay composes The Juggler Of Our Lady ( a one-act opera, libretto by
Alex King based upon a 13th-century French legend);
1962 – Shirley Verrett is the star of Carmen at the Spoleto Festival;
1962 – Grace Bumbry performs at the White House at the request of First Lady Jacqueline
Kennedy;
1963 – William Grant Still composes the one-act opera Highway 1, USA;
1963 – Soprano Grace Bumbry makes her American opera debut at the Chicago Lyric Opera;
1964 – Arthur Cunningham composes a children’s opera, Ostrich Feathers;
1965 – Henry Lewis is named musical director of the Los Angeles Opera Company;
1965-67 – Mark Fax composes Till Victory Is Won as an opera in four “episodes” with
prologue. (libretto based upon a poem by writer Owen Dodson). The work was
commissioned by the Centennial Committee of Howard University and dedicated to the past