Vera Little

Vera Pearl Little-Augustithis, born December 10, 1928, in Memphis, Tennessee, and died October 24, 2012, in Berlin, was an American operatic contralto and mezzo-soprano whose career spanned major international opera houses, festivals, and the Broadway stage.

Little graduated from Talladega College in Alabama in 1952, the same year she appeared on Broadway in Virgil Thomson's Four Saints in Three Acts. Following her graduation, she traveled to Paris on a Fulbright Scholarship to study with Georges Jouatte, subsequently continuing her vocal training in Rome, Copenhagen, and Germany under Margarete Bärwinkel and Richard Sengeleiter. Her competitive achievements preceded this period of study; she had won a Munich opera competition as early as 1950.

In 1958, director Carl Ebert engaged her for the Städtische Oper Berlin, the institution later known as the Deutsche Oper Berlin, where she remained a principal ensemble member for more than four decades. She achieved a major success there in 1963 in the title role of Bizet's Carmen. Little participated in two world premieres of operas by Hans Werner Henze: in 1965 she sang the role of Begonia in Der junge Lord in Berlin, and in 1966 she appeared in Die Bassariden at the Salzburg Festival. In 1967, she recorded the role of Giovanna in Donizetti's Anna Bolena, conducted by Alberto Erede, in a broadcast for Westdeutscher Rundfunk. The city of Berlin awarded her the title of Kammersängerin in 1970.

Among her most noted distinctions, Little was the first African American singer to perform at the Vatican by invitation of conductor Vittorio Gui, appearing before Pope John XXIII in 1959 in a Bach cantata, an event that brought her to international attention. Despite her European prominence, she did not perform in her hometown of Memphis until 1973, when she appeared as Ulrica in Verdi's Un ballo in maschera following extended negotiations.

Little was the sister of jazz trumpeter Booker Little. Beyond her performing career, she wrote poetry, some of which the composer Boris Blacher set to music and some of which Hans Wollschläger translated. She published two books: Tears in My Eyes in 1978 and A Touch of Warmth in 1988, the latter serving as a memoir of her career.