Mattiwilda Dobbs
Mattiwilda Dobbs ( born July 11, 1925 in Atlanta, Georgia) is an American opera singer with the voice soprano.
Life
Dobbs received music lessons as a child, aged seven and played piano and sang in the choir at church concerts. Dobbs attended Spelman College and studied singing in her hometown of Atlanta. She continued her education from 1946 to 1950 with Lotte Lehmann in New York and then from 1950 to 1952 with Pierre Bernac in Paris continued. In 1947 she received the Marian Anderson Award for young, colorful singer. In 1947, she began her singing career, initially only as a concert singer, with a concert in Mexico City. In 1951 she won the International Singing Competition in Geneva.
In 1952 her stage debut at the Holland Music Festival in the opera Le Rossignol by Igor Stravinsky. 1953 she appeared at La Scala as Elvira in the opera L' Italiana in Algeri by Gioacchino Rossini. From 1954 to 1956 she sang at the Glyndebourne Festival, among others, in 1954, the Zerbinetta in Ariadne auf Naxos and 1956 Konstanze in Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's Singspiel Die Entführung aus dem Serail. In October 1953, she made her debut at Covent Garden in London as Waldvogel in Wagner's Siegfried. In January 1954, she sang the Olympia in The Tales of Hoffmann. In May 1954, she has performed with great success in the opera The Golden Cockerel by Nikolai Rimsky -Korsakov. Further guest appearances were made there in the season 1955/1956 and 1959.
After Marian Anderson had occurred as first black man in 1955 once at the Metropolitan Opera in New York, Mattiwilda Dobbs was the first African-American singer who appeared regularly in this house. Dobbs was from 1956 to 1964 member of the ensemble at the Metropolitan Opera. She debuted in 1956 as Gilda in Giuseppe Verdi's there opera Rigoletto. In 1959 she had great success there as Olympia. Other roles were Constance, 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 debuted also as Easter 1961 Olympics. In May 1963 she made guest appearances at the Vienna State Opera as Zerbinetta.
They also guested at the Bolshoi Theatre 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 1957 to 1973 regularly at the Royal Opera in Stockholm and at the Festival of Drottningholm. In 1974 she retired from the opera stage.
As a singing teacher she worked, first as a visiting professor, 1972-1974 at Texas University in Austin from 1975 to 1976 from the University of Illinois, from 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 1954. 1957 they married in New York the Swedish journalist, screenwriter and actor Bengt Janzon and moved to Sweden gestures, where she lived until 1973 with him.
On her coloratura soprano, which is held on some recordings, was admired the brilliant technique and expressive speech.