- Anne Brown
Soprano Anne Wiggins Brown, bornAugust 9 ,1912 , created the role of Bess inGeorge Gershwin 's folk opera "Porgy and Bess " in 1935. She was also a radio and concert star.Biography
A native of
Baltimore, Maryland , she trained at Morgan College and then continued on to the esteemed New Institute of Musical Art (now known as theJuilliard School ) inNew York . After her appearance as the first Bess, she appeared in the Broadway play "Mamba's Daughters " and in the film "Rhapsody in Blue ". She appeared in various revivals of "Porgy" as well and toured as a concert artist from 1942 to 1948 when she settled inOslo, Norway , after meeting and marrying Norwegian olympic ski-jumperThorleif Schjelderup . She continued working as a professional musician into the 1950s on productions likeMenotti 's "The Medium " and "The Telephone ".Brown later said she felt her singing was better received in
Europe because she mainly sang works by European composers, such asBrahms , Schubert, Schumann and Mahler. She had to cut her career as a singer short for health reasonsFact|date=August 2007, but did work for several years as a song teacher. Among her students were the famous soprano Elisabeth Norberg-Schulz, actressLiv Ullmann and the ballad singer and former Minister of Culture,Åse Kleveland . She staged several operas inFrance andNorway . In 1999 she was elected as honorary citizen of Baltimore, the town where, 70 years earlier, she was refused a music education because of her colorFact|date=November 2007. In 2000 she was awarded Norway's Council of Cultures Honorary Award.Brown has been a Norwegian citizen since 1948, when she moved to Norway and married Olympic skier Thorleif Schjelderup, a medalist at the 1948 Winter Olympics. She currently resides in
Oslo .Brown is the aunt of [http://www.drmiller.com Emmett Emmanuel Miller, M.D.] , one of the originators of holistic medicine in the United States, and the great aunt of [http://www.baltimoresun.com/business/realestate/ktla-news-bio-miller,0,2234477.story Emmett Miller] , Emmy award winning evening news anchor on
KTLA . She is also the third cousin of champion beatboxer Butterscotch.References
* "The Music of Black Americans: A History".
Eileen Southern . W. W. Norton & Company; 3rd edition. ISBN 0-393-97141-4External links
* [http://www.afrovoices.com/abrown.html Anne Brown Biography]
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