Mattiwilda Dobbs

Mattiwilda Dobbs was born on the eleventh of July 1925 in Atlanta, Georgia, the fifth of six daughters of Irene Ophelia Thompson and John Wesley Dobbs — the civic leader who in 1932 was elected Grand Master of the Prince Hall Free and Accepted Masons of Georgia, served as a railway mail clerk for the Post Office, and helped found the Atlanta Negro Voters League. Reared in a household that prized education, she and all her sisters graduated from Spelman College, and she went on to study voice in New York and Europe.

Blessed with a luminous coloratura soprano, Dobbs won the international Geneva competition in 1951 and swiftly built a major career on the world's great stages. She became the first Black singer to perform at Italy's Teatro alla Scala, appearing there in 1953, and the first Black artist to sing a leading role at the San Francisco Opera.

On the ninth of November 1956 she made her Metropolitan Opera debut as Gilda in Verdi's Rigoletto — the first African American woman offered a long-term contract by the Met and among the first to sing romantic leading roles there as a company member. Over eight seasons she gave twenty-nine performances in six roles, including Zerbinetta, Zerlina, Olympia, Lucia, and Oscar.

She sang before kings and audiences across Europe, Australia, and the Soviet Union, and later gave herself to teaching, guiding a new generation of voices. Mattiwilda Dobbs died in Atlanta on the eighth of December 2015, at ninety. May the doors she opened, and the beauty she carried through them, be honored for as long as song is sung.