Music: Porgy to Pagliacci

No Negro has ever sung or been invited to sing a principal role in the Metropolitan Opera. Even dark-skinned roles (Otello, Aïda and her father, the Ethiopian King, the African slaves in Meyerbeer’s L’Africaine) have always been sung by whites. The staid Met says that its board welcomes “all operatically competent singers.” By the Met’s definition, those who would not make the grade include: Tenor Roland Hayes, Baritones Paul Robeson and Todd Duncan, Soprano Dorothy Maynor and Contralto Marian Anderson—five of the best voices in the U.S. or any country.

One of them, jovial, Kentucky-born Robert Todd (for A. Lincoln’s boy) Duncan, 41, has never given up hope of getting into grand opera. After teaching music and English in Louisville (Ky.) City College and Washington’s Howard University, he made his operatic debut in Manhattan in an all-Negro version of Cavalleria Rusticana. George Gershwin read the rave reviews, gave Baritone Duncan the lead in Porgy and Bess. He has since sung the part more than 1,200 times. He has also made concert tours, taught singing, had a key spot in Broadway’s Cabin in the Sky, floundered through a jive film called Syncopation. (Says Todd Duncan: “Hollywood’s not looking for my type. Dis, dat, dese—I can learn to talk that way but not very well.”)

All the while Baritone Duncan quietly practiced six operatic roles (Tonio in 7 Pagliacci, Escamillo in Carmen, Rigoletto, Germont in Traviata, the Ethiopian King in Aïda and Valentin in Faust). Last week his chance came—from New York’s municipal, low-priced opera company, presided over by a self-conscious champion of race equality. Mayor F. H. LaGuardia. Todd Duncan made his debut in I Pagliacci, followed it two nights later with Carmen. Sympathetic audiences cheered him long. Critics were almost as loud in praise of his singing, hoped his acting would improve. Musically, LaGuardia’s opera company is a lot farther away from the Met than the 15 blocks that separate the two buildings. But Todd was the first Negro in U.S. operatic history to sing a white role with a white cast.