Helen Phillips, first black singer with Met opera

Published 9:00 pm Monday, August 8, 2005

NEW YORK – Helen Phillips, a soprano who broke the color barrier among singers at the Metropolitan Opera seven years before Marian Anderson’s historic debut, has died at 86.

Phillips died of heart failure July 27 at New York’s Isabella Geriatric Center, her nurse there said.

Although the opera company had no formal policy barring nonwhites from appearing on its stage, Phillips became the first black chorister when she was hired as an extra for five performances of Mascagni’s “Cavalleria Rusticana” from December 1947 through February 1948, said Met archivist Jeff McMillan. In 1933, a troupe of black dancers performed with the Met, he said.

In January 1955, Anderson became the first black singer to perform a major role at the Met, portraying Ulrica in Verdi’s “A Masked Ball.”

A native of St. Louis who graduated from Lincoln University in Jefferson City, Phillips went on to build a career as a soloist in the early 1950s. She sang at Manhattan’s Town Hall in 1953, and with orchestras in Madrid, Spain and St. Louis, where she also sang with the opera company.

In 1954, Phillips sang the part of Queenie in a production of “Show Boat” at New York’s City Center.

She also performed more than 500 times as part of a State Department entertainment tour of Austria and West Germany.

Phillips later became a schoolteacher and vocal coach.

From Herald news services