Musicologist puts race center-stage
Crowds usually didn’t fluster Marian Anderson. On Easter Sunday in 1939, one of the most famous singers of the 20th century, with help from first lady Eleanor Roosevelt, staged a concert at the Lincoln Memorial. It was a musical stand against the Daughters of the American Revolution, who had refused to let Anderson perform in Washington’s Constitution Hall because of a “white artists only” contractual clause. Seventy-five thousand people turned out to hear the contralto voice her protest. But then, 16 years later, during her debut performance at New York’s Metropolitan Opera before an audience a fraction of the size, Anderson had butterflies. “I was there onstage, mixing the witch’s brew,” Anderson, who sang the role of the fortune-teller Ulrica in Verdi’s “Un Ballo in Maschera” (“The Masked Ball”), later said. “I trembled, and when the audience applauded and applauded before I could sing a note, I felt myself tightening into a knot.” Anderson...