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Publicity sheet for Mattiwilda Dobbs, 1950s

By Ching Chang

In the history of African-American opera singers breaking the color barrier, the Atlanta-born soprano Mattiwilda Dobbs's story is often overlooked in favor of the more prominent accounts of Marian Anderson's pioneering efforts or Leontyne Price's headlining ascent into full-fledged prima donna assoluta status. Yet Dobbs' list of impressive pioneering accomplishments is at least equal in both importance and magnitude to that of her immediate colleagues.

With a lustrous coloratura served by a limpid tone of vivid agility and shimmering colors, Dobbs made her Metropolitan Opera debut in 1956 as Gilda in Rigoletto, shortly after Marian Anderson's historical debut as Ulrica. By the sheer order of her talent and artistry, Mattiwilda Dobbs was a sophisticated and aristocratic singer, an articulate, poised and impeccably educated artist who had frequent triumphs at the major European capitals. A frequent recipient of prizes and honors conferred by the European royalty, she was also the first African-American to sing at Milan's La Scala. In the United States, she also desegregated the stage of the War Memorial Opera House in San Francisco, and even before Rosa Parks's historical bus ride in Alabama, Dobbs had decided she would not perform for segregated audiences.

Born in 1925, Mattiwilda Dobbs shared in a recent conversation her fascinating oral history account as a participant with a privileged historical perspective, growing up in a musical household of six sisters in the 1930s segregated American South. "Well, I did sing in church choirs, that is probably where I first sang. I am from Atlanta, and I went to Spelman College and that's where I started taking voice lessons and majored in music. But long before that, I was very fortunate in that my parents were musical people, and provided us with piano lessons.

"We were six girls - I was the fifth - and the deal with my parents was that everyone had to take piano lessons for at least ten years. After that, nobody wanted to stop anymore, everyone learned to love music and some of my sisters started singing with groups at school and in church. But the entire time, the whole emphasis was on classical music. We heard the Met broadcasts, and my older sister tells me that I used to imitate the singers in the radio - I can't even remember that, but I do remember hearing them from childhood. We got occasional touring companies, too. I think I saw my first opera when I was twelve years old."

Mattiwilda's father, John Wesley Dobbs, was strong influence in his six daughters' musical formation. As a railway postal clerk, he also managed to put his six daughters through college, seemingly by sheer will and determination. "He was born on a farm in North Georgia. He didn't have any formal musical training, although his father, whom I never met - he died before I was born - had played the fiddle, I understand. My father had a very good ear and he played by ear. My mother came from a more 'bourgeois' home, living in a city in Mississippi. She had piano lessons.

"They both loved music and bought a piano when they got married. My father would play by ear things that she knew, but he could also play popular music - I remember hearing him play ragtime. But he told me one time that he gave up on piano playing and playing cards, because he realized these activities took up too much time and he had to work very hard to support his family. He enjoyed those two things very much. But my parents did provide us with piano lessons and that was the reason I loved music. I was born into it; with my older sisters playing and singing, there was always music in the house.

"My father at one time had three jobs. He went into the railway mail service when he was a young man of twenty-one. Being in government service, he was able to retire after thirty years with a pension. Then he also become the Grand Master of the Black Masons from the State of Georgia. They owned a lot of property and he managed a lot of them. At one time, he was also selling insurance. I came later into the family, he didn't have it quite so hard by that time. He was also involved in early civil rights, organizing voters' leagues to encourage black people to register, even at a time when they didn't have much of an influence with their voting."

Separate Assimilation

Inheriting her father's iron-willed determination, Mattiwilda Dobbs also benefited from a solid thorough educational upbringing, framed towards assimilation within the structure of the South's segregated environment. "You have to understand that though we were segregated from the white people, we had a lot of our own institutions - colleges, banks, insurance companies - and some of them quite profitable. Spelman College was predominantly black and in those days of segregation we could not go to white schools except in the north. And there were some black people who sent their children to northern universities, but you had to have a lot of money to do that. So most of us in the South went to segregated schools set up to educate Southern blacks because the white people didn't want us going to their schools. These black colleges were founded by northern groups which came down right after the Civil War. They weren't colleges in the beginning, starting out as schools for reading and writing, then developed into high schools and then colleges. So Atlanta had a large number of black colleges.

"As far as classical music, it was a very normal pursuit in the community that I belonged to. There were differences within the black community too, mainly between those who had to work for white people as menials and those who did not have to do that and had better jobs. If you belonged to this group - as I did, because my father had a good job and some college training -- then you didn't have to be dependent on white people; you had your own life."

Classical music, of European heritage, stood at a near opposite of American jazz, which had its roots in the African-American marginalized experience. In the racially segregated environment of the South, with the rise of a more affluent population the two styles also became emblematic of a rising class division within African-American community, as Dobbs observes. "There was a big division! By the time we all lived together in the same segregated neighborhoods, there weren't very many poor black people in Atlanta, because most of them still lived in the country. In Atlanta, you had a lot of black people who were descendents of house servants, or freed slaves who were living in the cities. My father's family came from a farm nearby, but had been in the Atlanta for long time already and had worked their way up.

"When I was in Europe, very often people would ask me, 'How come you didn't sing jazz,' being a black American? Well, back then the places where you would have to go sing jazz were nightclubs and dives in parts of town where my parents would never allow me to go near. Classical music was part of the education of that period. And I suppose it was a 'white' education, trying to join the mainstream. We had quite a few white teacher in schools, and the whole culture was more towards the mainstream. In my classes we sang spirituals, but they were arranged in a classical way. We listened and danced to jazz, but I never thought of becoming a jazz singer myself; I never liked it. I had one sister who did like to sing it, but she couldn't go anywhere because of those places where you'd have to go. It was a very rough life to come up in the jazz world and that's why my sister who liked to sing jazz never entertained a career in it.

"We did have artists that came to our colleges and Marian Anderson gave one of her very first recitals there. There was also a concert series in Atlanta's Municipal Auditorium. My father never allowed us to go to segregated movies or events like that, but he did allow us to go to these segregated concerts. And that meant that all the black people had to sit in the balcony. He made that exception so that we could hear those artists. The early colored singers sang for segregated audiences. When Marian Anderson sang, there were more black people than usual who wanted to go to that concert, so they made a concession to allow half of the orchestra for black people and half for whites. But ordinarily, blacks sat in the balcony. One or two artists refused to sing for segregated audiences; Paul Robeson was the first one to do that. I decided I wasn't going to do it either and segregation was still going on in the South when I started singing professionally."

An African-American in Paris

The Marian Anderson scholarship prize was an important event in Dobbs early training and an early indication of the influence the African-American contralto would have on later generations of African-American singers. "I won her scholarship but didn't meet her at that time (this was in 1948). She was not there and her sister was taking care of the auditions. She was one of Sol Hurok's artists, who later also became my manager, and I met her through some functions that he had. She also used to invite the recipients of her scholarship prize to her home in Connecticut during the summers, but I could never go because I was always stuck in Atlanta. A few years ago there was a public television documentary on her and I was asked to speak on that. They had a private showing of the documentary here in Washington at the Kennedy Center. She was in a wheelchair but she was able to come to that. This was shortly before she moved to Portland to live with her nephew James De Priest.

"I started singing many years ago in college and then I went to New York to study with Lotte Leonard, a German teacher. I also took courses in opera at the Mannes College of Music. Even though I didn't think back then that I had much hope in opera, I was still training in it. And I went to Tanglewood one summer and did an opera workshop with Boris Goldovsky. I suppose the turning point came when after four years of private study in New York I won the fellowship that allowed me to go to Europe. I wanted to go to Paris and study French music, because I thought I would just be doing recitals, although at the time in New York at the City Opera, Lawrence Winters, Camilla Williams and Todd Duncan had already sang with the company. I saw them at the City Opera, but there were no blacks at the Met.

"So I studied in Paris with Pierre Bernac and then I won the First Prize in singing at the Geneva Conservatory competition in 1951. It was a very prestigious career prize and a lot of opera and concert managers went there to see and hear who won. Out of that, I got an audition for La Scala and was able to get an engagement to sing there. From that, I also got an agent in Paris and agents in different countries and that really launched my career singing in operas and concerts in Europe."

Often missing on discussions about "colored" singers is what role the racial dimension played in Europe. That so many African-American singers had to go abroad to develop professionally, Dobbs ponders whether the Europeans were more accepting than the Americans: "That might have been so. But also, I think it was easier to make a career in those days because you didn't have to have a big reputation; they were willing to take you on just their own judgment. You didn't have to have lots of experience, good reviews and all that. If they heard a talent they thought was good, they trusted their own judgment. And the public did too, I think. I don't really know what they thought of black singers as a group, but I was the first black singer to sing at La Scala."

On Homecoming and the Met

"I started my career in Europe and hadn't worked anywhere else. I was singing there when I sang for Sol Hurok in Paris and he was the one who brought me back to the States, where I made my debut in an opera concert, singing Zerbinetta, a role I had already sung onstage. That debut in New York got very good reviews and that helped. I think that was in 1954. Then I did recitals which Hurok arranged for me. I started going to Australia and various places far away. It was in 1955 when the Met wanted me to do an audition on their stage; they didn't know how I would sound in the house - it was a huge house. In 1956, they offered me Gilda in Rigoletto and that's when I made my Met debut, and at that time I had already sung the role at Covent Garden.

"[Rudolf] Bing's policy wasn't that he didn't want American singers. He wanted singers with experience. It was complicated because at that time there weren't very many regional houses in America, so the only place to get the experience was in Europe. So he had scouts in Europe who would go and hear you; I'm sure that the fact that I was singing in Europe helped me get the Met debut. Leontyne Price also was singing in Europe at the time and that was true for the white singers also. Bing had a lot of Europeans at Met because they had the experience and the American singers he had also had sung in Europe."

Curtain call after a performance of The Golden Cockerel with (left to right) Raymond Manton, Mattiwilda Dobbs, Lorenzo Alvary. San Francisco Opera (1955). Photo by Robert Lackenbach

It is easy to assume that African Americans possibly have a cultural advantage in becoming singers. Given that church singing is such a common and important experience in the African American tradition, it seems logical that many African-Americans would discover their voices' potential while singing in church. But Dobbs isn't so sure. "You are talking about gospel singing? That can ruin voices too! I'm just thinking about the black women opera singers I know of; I don't think any of them sang gospel. The type of singing I did in church, hymns and so forth, was much closer to music from the white churches. Most of the music in black churches has become exclusively gospel, which is really more similar to rhythm and blues, but sung to religious texts. It is very exciting to hear, but the voices sing in a very uncontrolled way. The sopranos will sometimes sing higher than they should, they shout and scream - there is a lot of vocal abuse there. I know this because I taught at Howard University for fourteen years. On Mondays, many of my students would come in hoarse, having sung gospel music in church on Sunday. So at least in my generation, I don't really think there were any opera singers who sang gospel. Although, I know Kathleen Battle has sang some gospel; her father was a church minister. She surely was very careful and didn't do a lot that screaming and shouting. It's just not very good for anybody who is going to study to sing opera to sing like that."

Whether or not it can be attributed to cultural factors or discrimination, it has often been noted that there have been significantly fewer African-American men who have been successful in opera, compared to the women. Dobbs comments: "Well, for one thing, there are more women who study music. I've seen this in the classes that I had. There are many more girls than there are boys. Maybe not as many boys were as willing to study as hard. Or maybe they were more interested in going into jazz... I really don't know. But we have had some outstanding black male singers also. Like I told you, Lawrence Winters was already singing at the City Opera when I went to New York. He had a beautiful baritone voice and later went abroad to sing at the Hamburg Opera. Then there was Robert McFerrin, who was the second black person to sing at the Met, the one who came after Marian Anderson. I knew him when he was a student, he had a beautiful voice. But people have asked me these questions before, and I don't really know the answer."

Civil Rights and Mixed-Race Marriages

"Yes, there was still legal segregation in the South when I sang at the Met in 1956. Civil rights laws didn't do away with segregation until the 1960s. I married an European and I happened to be singing at the Met at time, so we married in New York because we couldn't get married in Atlanta; it was against the law. I lived in Europe all those years and I would only come to the States to visit my family or to sing.

"The biggest impact segregation had for me as a singer was that I said I would not sing for segregated audiences and because of that I got cut off from a lot of work in the South that I might have been able to have otherwise. But I did see the breaking down of those laws as I was finally able to sing in Atlanta, my hometown, in the Municipal Auditorium. I was the first person to sing for a desegregated audience in Atlanta, in 1961. I remember it well. The mayor came and gave me flowers. That meant a lot to me, because before then I had to sit in balcony whenever I went to that auditorium.

"In my work, I really didn't have any other big problems. The one thing I noticed the most was that my husband and I would get stared at in the streets and I thought that was very strange because it had never happened in Europe. My husband was Swedish. It surprised me because I thought that this wouldn't have happened anymore by that time. But in my dealings with colleagues, people at the Met and managers, I never felt mistreated. The only possible thing perhaps was that I didn't get a lot recitals all over the country that I felt I would have gotten ordinarily. These used to be handled by society ladies who had parties afterwards, and since there were a lot of stories on the papers about my marriage, that might have hurt my chances for getting more appearances in the hinterlands. But I don't know for sure."

Mattiwilda Dobbs observes that the world was a much different place back when she became a professional singer. To singers of the current generation, African-American or otherwise, she compares both environments: "Well, there are more regional companies now, which should give more opportunities for performers. Whether or not these regional companies have been neglected I don't know. There has been always a lot of competition, but there are always good chances for talented people too. I think it's much harder generally today, because you have got more well trained singers competing. In my time, a lot of us would go to Europe and find jobs in Germany because Germany was just getting back on its feet after the war and had just lost a generation of singers and teachers. There were a lot of vacancies, which nowadays are not there anymore. Also, now the Eastern Europeans singers are coming into their own, not only here but also in Europe. So there are just not as many opportunities for everyone now.

"I think the American singers are some of the best trained singers in the world. But it is a very hard career and now it seems like the stage directors have a lot more power, even doing a lot of the casting. I read an article in Opera News saying that they're casting more on how people look than how they sing now. I don't know if that's going to hurt black singers. A lot of people have said to me that it seems like there are not as many black singers at the Met as there used to be and I think that's true.

"The singing standards in general were much higher back then. That's just my personal opinion. I think we had more really good singers back then. I don't know whether it's training or what. We had some good singers, but when you think back 30 or 40 years ago there were a lot of great singers, not just at the Met but all over the world."

Mattiwilda Dobbs is now retired, living in Arlington, Virginia. She stills attends opera performances regularly at the Washington Opera and spends her summers in Sweden, where she has a house and many friends.

African-American Women
http://www.mtsu.edu/~kmiddlet/history/women/wh-afam.html