Charlotte Holloman

Charlotte Wesley Holloman (March 24, 1922 – July 30, 2015) was an American soprano who performed on Broadway and in opera houses in the United States and Europe. Born in Georgetown, Washington, D.C., she was the daughter of Charles Harris Wesley, a historian and college professor, and Florence Louise Johnson Wesley, an English teacher. Part of her childhood was spent in England, where her father conducted research on a Guggenheim Fellowship. She graduated from Dunbar High School in 1937 and went on to study music at Howard University, where her instructors included Camille Nickerson, Hazel Harrison, and Todd Duncan. She was a member of Delta Sigma Theta. Holloman earned a Master of Arts in Voice and Music Education from Columbia University in 1943, and in 1961 she received a Rockefeller Foundation grant to pursue further vocal studies in Europe.

Holloman made her professional stage debut in 1950 at the Circle-in-the-Square Theatre in The Barrier, a musical drama, which also marked the beginning of her Broadway career. In 1952 she appeared on Broadway in My Darlin' Aida and in the revival of Shuffle Along. She returned to The Barrier in a 1961 revival. Her first professional recital took place at New York's Town Hall in 1954, after which a New York Times reviewer described her vocal range and facility as "nothing short of phenomenal" and noted that she performed "staggeringly difficult arias as casually as if they were Marchesi vocalises." In 1955 she toured the United States, and in 1957 she appeared in Canada. The following year she sang at Carnegie Recital Hall at a concert held in memory of composer Harry Burleigh. In 1967 she performed at a benefit concert at Town Hall in tribute to Philippa Duke Schuyler.

Later in her career Holloman moved into opera roles, singing with companies in Essen and Saarbrücken. Her operatic repertoire included The Magic Flute, Tosca, Madama Butterfly, and Das Rheingold, among other works. She also toured the Bahamas alongside Todd Duncan and Margaret Bonds. In her later years Holloman taught voice at Howard University and served as an adjunct instructor at several other schools in the Washington area, in addition to maintaining a private voice studio. She married physician John L. S. Holloman Jr. in 1944; the couple had a daughter, Charlotte, and a summer home on Martha's Vineyard, and divorced before 1965. Holloman died on July 30, 2015, at the age of 93, from breast cancer, at a nursing home in Washington, D.C. Her papers are held at George Washington University's Gelman Library as part of the District of Columbia Africana Archives Project.