Black & White Aida

Black & White Aïda

Usually, when an opera company puts on Aïda, singers have to don blackface to play Aïda and her father Amonasro, King of the Ethiopians. Last week, for its first production of Verdi’s masterpiece, Manhattan’s City Opera Company didn’t have to bother: there were two first-rate Negro singers in the company.

Pert little Soprano Camilla Williams, a City Center veteran (who paints her face to sing Madame Butterfly and La Bohéme) was a natural for Aïda. Amonasro was a newcomer. But by the time the curtain slid down last week on Aïda, 6 ft. Harlem Baritone Lawrence Winters, 32, had his first big-time opera audience, if not all the critics, cheering, too. His voice was fine, strong and ringing on top; and what he lacked in power, polish and poise should come with time.

Son of a South Carolina cotton picker, Larry Winters worked his way through Howard University as a delivery boy, elevator operator and porter. Three days before graduation, he got his first break: the role of Emperor of Haiti in a production of Negro Composer Clarence Cameron White’s opera Quango. He made a hit in it, but not his fortune. Soon afterwards he took a job as a singing waiter in Manhattan’s Belmont Plaza Hotel.

Stokowski hired him as a soloist in a performance of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, but his dress suit cost as much as he earned. Then he went into the Army a private, and came out a lieutenant, and made enough money singing Red Ball Express in the Broadway G.I. hit Call Me Mister to pay for an encouraging Town Hall debut. His springboard to Aïda: success in Mexico City on the radio and as soloist at President Miguel Alemán’s official dinners.