Скачать или смотреть born August 9, 1912 Anne Wiggins Brown "Summertime" ORIGINAL CAST

Anne Brown (August 9, 1912 – March 13, 2009) was an African American soprano who created the role of "Bess" in the original production of George Gershwin's opera Porgy and Bess in 1935. She was also a radio and concert singer. She settled in Norway in her 30s and later became a Norwegian citizen.
A native of Baltimore, Maryland, Annie Wiggins Brown was the daughter of Dr. Harry F. Brown, a physician, and his wife, the former Mary Allen Wiggins. Her father was the grandson of a slave and her mother's parents were of black, Cherokee Indian, and Scottish-Irish origins. She had three sisters. As a young child, Brown showed a great musical talent and according to family legend she could sing a perfect scale at just 9 months old.
As an African-American, she was not allowed to attend a Roman Catholic elementary school in her native Baltimore. She trained at Morgan College and then applied to the Peabody Institute, but was rejected from the school due to her race. Brown then applied to the Juilliard School in New York at the encouragement of the wife of the owner of The Baltimore Sun. She was admitted to Juilliard when she was 16, becoming the first African-American vocalist to attend there. She was awarded Juilliard's Margaret McGill scholarship when she was 20 years old.
In 1933, she was a second-year graduate student at Juilliard. She learned that George Gershwin was going to compose an opera about African Americans in South Carolina. She decided to write him a letter, which led to Gershwin's secretary calling her to come and sing for him. After singing several classical arias and the spiritual "A City Called Heaven" for Gershwin, Brown was frequently invited by the composer to come down and sing parts of the opera for him as he was composing the work's music. As a result, the role of Bess grew from a secondary character, like it was in DuBose Heyward's novel Porgy, to one of the opera's leading roles.

After her appearance as the first Bess, Brown returned to Broadway in the 1937 musical revue Pins and Needles. This was later followed by an appearance in the 1939 Broadway play Mamba's Daughters in the roles of Gardenia and the "Lonesome Walls" Singer. Brown sang Bess in several revivals of Porgy and Bess during this time, including the 1942 Broadway revival. She also sang Bess for the Decca Records album Selections from George Gershwin's folk opera Porgy and Bess and sang some of Bess's music in an appearance in the 1945 Gershwin biography film Rhapsody in Blue.

Brown toured Europe as a concert artist from 1942 to 1948. Brown said that she left the United States because of continued racial prejudice. As she told The New York Times in 1998, "We tough girls tough it out. I've lived a strange kind of life—half black, half white, half isolated, half in the spotlight. Many things that I wanted as a young person for my career were denied to me because of my color". She also noted, regarding her light complexion, "Though there is no place on earth without prejudice. In fact, a French journalist wrote an article during one of my tours there asking: 'Why does she say she is colored? She's as white as any singer. It's just a trick to get people interested.' Can you imagine? Of course I was advertised as 'a Negro soprano.' What is 'a Negro soprano'?" She also stated that she felt her singing was better received in Europe because she mainly sang works by European composers, such as Brahms, Schubert, Schumann and Mahler. Wikipedia