Mattiwilda Dobbs

Mattiwilda Dobbs was born on the eleventh of July 1925 at Atlanta, Georgia, the fifth of six daughters of John Wesley Dobbs — the Grand Master of the Prince Hall Free and Accepted Masons of Georgia, a postal clerk, and one of the principal Black civic leaders of pre-war Atlanta — and Irene Ophelia Thompson Dobbs. The Dobbs household at the West Side of Atlanta was Black professional Atlanta of the inter-war period, and all six daughters were college graduates.

She was placed at the Spelman College at Atlanta in 1942 at seventeen and completed the bachelor’s in music there in 1946 as the class valedictorian. She took the Master of Arts in voice at the Columbia University Teachers College in 1948 and a Rosenwald Fellowship for further study in Europe at the Mannes College of Music in 1948–1949 and the Lotte Lehmann Master Class at the Tanglewood Festival in the summer of 1950.

She was admitted to the studio of the Belgian soprano Pierre Bernac at Paris in 1950, on a John Hay Whitney Foundation Fellowship — among the principal Paris voice teachers of the post-war period — and remained at Bernac’s studio until 1953.

She won in 1951 the International Music Competition at Geneva — the first Black singer to win the competition — and was engaged on the strength of the win by the La Scala opera house of Milan for the 1952–1953 season. She made her La Scala debut on the seventh of December 1953 in the role of Elvira in Auber’s La Muta di Portici — the first Black singer to perform on the La Scala stage.

She gave her Royal Opera House Covent Garden debut on the twentieth of February 1954 in the title role of Strauss’s Ariadne auf Naxos and her Glyndebourne Festival debut on the twenty-third of June 1956 in the role of Zerbinetta in the Strauss opera Ariadne auf Naxos.

She made her Metropolitan Opera debut on the ninth of November 1956 in the role of Gilda in Verdi’s Rigoletto — the first Black singer to sing a leading role at the Met as a regular member of the company across a full season — and sang at the Met across the eight seasons from 1956 to 1964 in eight principal roles.

She won the 1973 Grammy Award for Best Classical Album for the Stockholm recording of Mozart’s Die Entführung aus dem Serail.

She taught voice at the Howard University, the University of Texas, and the Spelman College after her retirement from the operatic career in 1974.

She died at Atlanta on the eighth of December 2015 of complications of pneumonia, at ninety.

She is honored here as the first Black principal soprano at the Met across a full season.