‘Opera has never been white’: The Invisible Legacy of Black Women in Classical Music

It was 1781 when a 14-year-old girl made her debut as an opera soloist in Saint-Domingue, the former French colony now called Haiti. She was a free person of color, the first person of African descent to star as the soloist in a French opera, and soon became the main female opera singer in Port-au-Prince. Yet, [...]