Anne Brown

Anne Wiggins Brown, born August 9, 1912, in Baltimore, Maryland, was an American lyric soprano whose Broadway career spanned from 1935 to 1942. She died on March 13, 2009. Brown is best known for originating the role of Bess in George Gershwin's Porgy and Bess, a part that Gershwin expanded from a secondary character into a leading role as a direct result of his collaboration with her.

Brown was the daughter of Dr. Harry F. Brown, a physician, and Mary Allen Wiggins Brown. 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: Henrietta, Mamie, and Harriet. As an African American, Brown was denied admission to a Catholic elementary school in Baltimore and was later rejected by the Peabody Institute on racial grounds. At the encouragement of the wife of the owner of The Baltimore Sun, she applied to the Juilliard School in New York, where she was admitted at age sixteen, becoming the first African-American vocalist to attend the institution. She studied singing with Lucia Dunham and received Juilliard's Margaret McGill scholarship at age twenty.

In 1933, while a second-year graduate student at Juilliard, Brown learned that Gershwin was composing an opera about African Americans in South Carolina. She wrote him a letter, which led to an audition in which she sang classical arias and the spiritual "A City Called Heaven." Gershwin subsequently invited her repeatedly to sing portions of the opera as he composed it, and through this ongoing collaboration the role of Bess grew substantially beyond its origins in DuBose Heyward's novel Porgy. Brown later recalled that she knew the opera in its entirety before she ever performed it onstage, including the parts of other characters.

Brown sang Bess at the world premiere of Porgy and Bess at the Colonial Theatre in Boston on September 30, 1935, the tryout preceding the Broadway opening at the Alvin Theater in New York City on October 10, 1935. The production was directed by Rouben Mamoulian and ran for 124 performances. Olin Downes of The New York Times described Brown's performance as "a high point of interpretation." Following the Broadway run, a United States tour began on January 27, 1936, in Philadelphia, traveling to Pittsburgh and Chicago before concluding in Washington, D.C., on March 21, 1936. During the Washington engagement, Brown joined the cast, led by Todd Duncan, in protesting segregated seating at the National Theatre. Brown stated that she refused to perform if Black audience members, including her own family, could not attend. Management ultimately yielded to the cast's demands, resulting in the first integrated audience for any production at the National Theatre. Segregation at the venue was reinstated after the final performance.

Brown returned to Broadway in the 1937 musical revue Pins and Needles and subsequently appeared in the 1939 play Mamba's Daughters, in which she played the roles of Gardenia and the "Lonesome Walls" Singer. She reprised the role of Bess in the 1942 Broadway revival of Porgy and Bess, having accumulated approximately 500 performances in the original production and that revival combined. She also recorded Bess's music for the Decca Records album Selections from George Gershwin's folk opera Porgy and Bess and appeared in the 1945 Gershwin biography film Rhapsody in Blue, performing selections from the opera.

From 1942 to 1948, Brown toured Europe as a concert artist. She cited ongoing racial prejudice in the United States as a reason for leaving the country. She noted that her concert work in Europe focused on compositions by Brahms, Schubert, Schumann, and Mahler, and that she felt her singing was better received there as a result. In 1948, Brown settled in Oslo, Norway, after marrying skier Thorleif Schjelderup, a medalist at the 1948 Winter Olympics. She subsequently became a Norwegian citizen. Schjelderup was her third husband; her first marriage, to a medical student named F. H. Howard, took place when she was nineteen and ended in divorce. Her second marriage, in 1938 to C. C. Pettit, produced a daughter, Paula, born in 1939. Her marriage to Schjelderup also ended in divorce; together they had a daughter, Vaar Inga, born in 1951, and Schjelderup adopted Paula as well.

Brown continued performing as a concert singer and recitalist into the 1950s and appeared in operas including Gian Carlo Menotti's The Medium and The Telephone. Her singing career ended due to asthma, with her final professional performance taking place at the Teatro Colón in October 1955. She subsequently became a voice teacher, with students including actress Liv Ullmann and soprano Elizabeth Norberg-Schulz.