Muncie Times, Muncie, Delaware County, 2 March 2000 — Page 15

The Muncie Times, March 2, 2000, page 15

They Had a Dream

Caterina Jarboro, Opera Star

Caterina Jarboro (1903-?), the first black woman singer to star in an all-white opera company in the United States, was born Catherine Yarborough in Wilmington, N. C. In 1933, the sensational appearance of Jarboro in the title role of Aida with the Chicago Opera Co. in the Hippodrome, New York City, created a demand for a repeat performance 2 days later. In 1930, she had sung the role of Aida at the Puccini Theatre in Milan, Italy. Encouraged by the favorable comments on Jarboro’s performance in New York, the manager of the Chicago Opera Co. engaged her for a 20-week

season with grand opera in the fall of 1933. She was presented in the role of Selika in Meyerbeen L’Africaine. In this production,

she won the praise of the foremost critics of the county for her fine interpretation—both as a singer and as an actress. Jarboro was educated in the Catholic schools of Wilmington and at the Gregory Normal School. At 13, she went to Brooklyn to live with an aunt and studied music. To earn funds for study in Europe, she took part in the musical productions, Shuffle Along and Runnin’ Wild. While in Europe, she studied under singing master in Paris and Milan. Her triumphant appearance after her return to America in 1933 dwindled rapidly when white Americans

realized that she was an African American and not Italian. Although she made concert tours throughout the country and appeared before an audience of 6,000 in a performance with the Chicago Opera Co. in 1935, the New York Metropolitan Opera Association refused to accept her membership in its newly formed grand opera company. In her efforts to join the company, however, she did pay the way for future talented and trained black women aspirants in opera in the United States of America.

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