The Met and the Color Line: Dorothy Maynor

 

During the long Covid months of closure, the Metropolitan Opera, in step with so many other American cultural organizations, announced the measures it would take in response to the reckoning that followed the death of George Floyd at the hands of the police. For one, the Met named its first Chief Diversity Officer. The company announced, too, that it would initiate racial justice training so as to provide staff with “cultural context” in working with cast members of color.

But the conspicuous public relations impact of the Met’s response to the wide reach of Black Lives Matter and to the criticism of opera companies by Black artists was achieved through the rescheduling of Fire Shut Up in My Bones as the opening bill for the reopening of the Met after the lost season of 2020-2021. Terence Blanchard’s opera had originally been on the docket not for this year but for a future season. (For commentary of Black singers on racial bias in opera see the online talk shows hosted by Lawrence Brownlee, “The Sitdown with LB,” Karen Slack “Kiki Konversations,”and the J’Nai Bridges panel discussion.)  

In this post, we introduce those of our readers who have not yet heard her to one of the extraordinary African-American singers of the past who appeared neither at the Met nor, in fact, on any operatic stage. Such was the case for Dorothy Maynor. The closest she came to the company was her appointment to the Metropolitan Board in 1975. As of July 2020, forty-five years later, only three of the forty-five managing directors on the Met board were Black.  As of that same date, only one of the ten members of the music staff and two of the ninety-six members of the orchestra were Black.

Dorothy Maynor (1910-1996) was born in Norfolk, Virginia, the daughter of a Methodist minister. She graduated from Virginia’s then Hampton Institute, and then from the Westminster Choir College, Princeton, New Jersey, where she earned a master’s degree in choral conducting. She then moved to New York to study voice privately. Her big break came in 1939 at the Berkshire Music Festival in Tanglewood. There, friends persuaded a reluctant Serge Koussevitsky, conductor of the resident Boston Symphony Orchestra, to grant Maynor an audition--upon which he proclaimed her “A musical revelation! The world must hear her!” Koussevitsky lost no time in arranging that she sing with his orchestra. In this, her first engagement as soloist with a major symphony orchestra, she chose a program that demonstrated undisputedly that hers was the voice of an opera singer, that she had mastered a wide repertoire and disparate styles: the Baroque “O, Sleep, Why Dost Thou Leave Me” (Handel, Semele), the Classical “Non mi dir” (Mozart, Don Giovanni), the late-Romantic “Depuis le jour” (Charpentier, Louise), and even Brünnhilde’s heroic battle-cry, “Ho-jo-to-ho” (Wagner, Die Walküre). New York Times critic Noel Straus heaped praise on Maynor for her timbre, technique, flexibility, musicality, and interpretation.

In 1940, the soprano captured the attention of the record-buying public with her soaring rendition of Louise’s passionate evocation of falling in love. “Depuis le jour” became one of Maynor’s signature pieces. Here she is in that stunning recording; the Philadelphia Orchestra is led by Eugene Ormandy.

Maynor made her Town Hall debut to a sold-out house and critical raves in November 1939. She was on her way to concert appearances with America’s most prestigious orchestras. In February 1940, she won the Naumberg Prize for recitalists, under 30, who had given the outstanding performance of the year at Town Hall. In December 1940, she became the first Black singer to be heard in the auditorium of the Library of Congress.

Louise’s ecstasy could not be more distant from the outpourings of Leonora in La Forza del destino. Maynor rises to the emphatic outbursts of Verdi’s beleaguered heroine, strong throughout the range, generous with tone and emotion, leaving no doubt of her ability to meet the challenges the composer set for the dramatic soprano. This is a live recording from a 1950 concert; the San Francisco Symphony is conducted by Pierre Monteux.

At the same San Francisco concert, Maynor sang, in English translation, the “Song to the Moon” from Dvořák’s Rusalka. Again, she applies her ravishing timbre to the aria’s radical shifts of register with the refulgent tone, depth of feeling, and the musical rectitude that distinguish her.

Dorothy Maynor pursued a full and successful concert career until her retirement in 1963. In that same year, she founded the Harlem School of the Arts where she taught and was Executive Director until 1979. 

There is no doubt that hers was one of the foremost operatic voices of her generation. She regularly programmed arias in her recitals and her engagements with orchestras, adding demanding excerpts by Spontini and Weber to the familiar selections from Handel, Mozart, and Verdi. The color line barred from the opera stage what would have been Maynor’s exceptional Pamina, Donna Anna, Leonora, and so many other leading roles.