Ruby Elzy

Ruby Pearl Elzy (February 20, 1908 – June 26, 1943) was an American operatic soprano who originated the role of Serena in George Gershwin's folk opera Porgy and Bess and performed the part more than eight hundred times across her Broadway career, which spanned 1935 to 1942.

Elzy was born in Pontotoc, Mississippi, the daughter of Emma Elzy, a teacher and prominent member of the Methodist church. Her father Charlie abandoned the family when she was five. She had two sisters, Amanda and Beatrice Wayne, and one brother, Robert. Her sister Amanda became a prominent educator after whom Amanda Elzy High School in Greenwood, Mississippi is named, and their mother Emma, who died in 1985 at the age of 98, is commemorated by the annual Emma K. Elzy award presented by the Mississippi Conference of the United Methodist Church. Elzy attended Rust College before enrolling at Ohio State University, where she graduated in 1930, and subsequently completed her studies at the Juilliard School in 1934, where she trained under soprano Lucia Dunham.

The role of Serena, which Elzy created in Porgy and Bess, requires the character to sing the soprano aria "My Man's Gone Now," a lament performed after her husband Robbin is killed during a craps game. Although Elzy performed the role hundreds of times, it is fellow cast member Anne Brown, who played Bess, whose voice appears singing the aria on the 1940 original cast album of selections from the opera. Elzy's own performance of the aria is preserved on a 1937 recording of the Gershwin Memorial Concert, held at the Hollywood Bowl three months after the composer's death. In 1940, composer Harold Arlen selected Elzy to record the world premiere of his original suite of Negro spirituals, "Reverend Johnson's Dream," which stands as her only commercial recording. That same year she married Jack Carr, an actor and singer who had appeared alongside her in Porgy and Bess; the marriage lasted until her death.

Beyond Porgy and Bess, Elzy's Broadway credits included the play Brown Sugar in 1937 and the musical John Henry in 1940. Her work extended across multiple performance platforms: she appeared on film, radio, and the concert stage. In 1933 she appeared with Paul Robeson in the film The Emperor Jones, playing the role of Dolly, and she later appeared in Birth of the Blues alongside Bing Crosby and Mary Martin. She performed at Harlem's Apollo Theater and at the Hollywood Bowl, and on December 15, 1937, she entertained at the White House at a luncheon hosted by First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt for the wives of U.S. Supreme Court Justices.

Elzy died on June 26, 1943, in Detroit, following surgery to remove a benign tumor, one week after her final performance as Serena and just as she was preparing to take on the title role in Giuseppe Verdi's Aida. She was 35 years old. In 2004, biographer David E. Weaver published Black Diva of the Thirties: The Life of Ruby Elzy through the University Press of Mississippi. Two years later, Weaver produced a CD compilation entitled Ruby Elzy in Song, released on the Cambria label, featuring twenty rare recorded and broadcast performances.