Caterina Jarboro

Caterina Jarboro (July 24, 1898 – August 13, 1986) was an American opera singer. She was the first female black opera singer to perform a leading role with an otherwise all-white company in America, twenty-two years before Marian Anderson's début at the Metropolitan Opera.

Caterina Jarboro

Biography

According to the June 1900 census,[1] Jarboro was born in 1898 as Katherine (Katie) Lee Yarborough at 214 Church Street, Wilmington, North Carolina.[2] Her father John W. was African-American and her mother Annie E. was Native-American. She had at least four siblings. Her siblings alive at her time of death were Joseph Yarborough of Philadelphia, and Anna Gayle of Palmetto, Florida.[3]

Jarboro studied in North Carolina and then in New York. She sang in the theater musical Shuffle Along and in James P. Johnson's Running Wild. In 1930 she debuted in opera with Verdi's Aida at the Puccini Theatre in Milan, Italy.

In 1933, twenty-two years before Marian Anderson's début at the Metropolitan Opera, impresario Alfredo Salmaggi hired Jarboro to sing with his opera company at the New York Hippodrome. She was presented in the title role of Verdi's Aida. Later she appeared with the company as Sélika in Meyerbeer's L'Africaine. She was the first female black opera singer ever to perform a leading role with an otherwise all-white company in America (baritone Jules Bledsoe had sung Amonasro with the Cleveland Stadium Opera in 1932).[4] This milestone earned Salmaggi special recognition from First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt. Many other opera appearances throughout Europe followed. She returned to the United States in 1941. Among her performances were a recitals at the Town Hall in 1942 and Carnegie Hall in 1944. The New York Metropolitan Opera Association invited her to become a member, but when they realized she was not Italian, but Afro-Indian, they denied her membership. After a lengthy and successful career she declined membership when a second invitation was extended. She retired in 1955.[3]

Jarboro died on August 13, 1986 in Manhattan. She is believed to have been 88 years old.[3]

References
  1. 1900 census for Katie l Yarabough (misspelled). "Ancestry.com".
  2. Her obituary says she was 90 years old. The Social Security Death Index has her birthday as July 24, 1908 which would make her 78 years old at death. The Biography & Genealogy Master Index has her birth year as 1898, 1903 and 1908 in three different entries. Her age on a ship manifest (Saturnina, sailing from Genoa, Italy to New York City) for October 11, 1939, lists her birth as "July 24th 1898" and her age as 41, which would have made her 88 when she died.
  3. "Caterina Jarboro obituary". The New York Times. August 16, 1986. Retrieved 2015-03-06. Caterina Jarboro, a soprano who made her United States debut in Verdi's Aida in 1933, a black woman taking the lead role in an all-white company, died Wednesday at her home in Manhattan after a brief illness. She was 90 years old. [sic]
  4. Shirley, George (2012). "Il Rodolfo Nero, or the Masque of Blackness" , p. 263. In Blackness in Opera, edited by Naomi André, Karen M. Bryan, and Eric Saylor, University of Illinois Press, Urbana, Chicago, and Springfield. ISBN 9780252036781.

Further reading
  • Eileen Southern, The Music of Black Americans: A History. W. W. Norton & Company; 3rd edition. ISBN 0-393-97141-4
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