Lillian Evanti
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Lillian Evanti (August 12, 1890 – December 6, 1967), was an African-American opera singer.
My Notes: No recordings were found.
Life
She was born in Washington, D.C., and graduated from Armstrong Manual Training School.
She graduated from Howard University with a Bachelor's Degree in music and studied in France and Italy. Evanti, a soprano, sang at the Belasco Theater in 1926 with Marian Anderson. She debuted in 1927 in Delibes's Lakmé at Nice, France. As an opera singer and concert artist, she toured throughout Europe and South America.
In 1943, she performed with the Watergate Theater barge on the Potomac River. In 1944, she appeared at The Town Hall (New York City). She received acclaim as Violetta in Verdi's La traviata as produced by the National Negro Opera Company in 1945.
In 1963, she walked with her friend Alma Thomas in the March on Washington.
Family
She married Roy Tibbs, and lived at 1910 Vermont Avenue, Northwest, Washington, D.C.; they had a son, Thurlow E. Tibbs, Jr.
Lillian (Evans) Evanti, one of the first African American women to become an internationally prominent opera performer, was born in Washington D.C. in 1891. Evanti was born into a prominent Washington, D.C. family. Her father, Wilson Evans, was a medical doctor and teacher in the city. He was the founder of Armstrong Technical High School and served many years as its principal. Anne Brooks, Evanti’s mother, taught music in the public school system of Washington D.C.
Evanti received her education from Armstrong Technical High School and graduated from Howard University in 1917 with her bachelor’s degree in music. A gifted student and performer, she was able to speak and sing in five different languages. The following year she and Roy W. Tibbs, her Howard University music professor, married and had a son, Thurlow Tibbs.
Combining her maiden and married names into the stage name, Evanti, a lyric soprano, began singing professionally in 1918. Her career progressed slowly until she moved to France in 1925 where she became the first African American to sing with a European opera company. From France she traveled around Europe and on occasion returned to the United States to perform. During her travels she gave radio performances, sang in a variety of operas and in 1932 was given a chance to audition for the New York Metropolitan Opera. Evanti was not asked to join the Company and for some time blamed the decision on racial discrimination.
Despite the setback Evanti remained popular, performing in Latin America as well as Europe. She gave a special command performance for President Franklin D. Roosevelt and his wife, Eleanor in 1934. She also performed concerts for the armed forces during World War II.
In 1941 Evanti and Mary Cardwell Dawson created The National Negro Opera Company in Pittsburgh to provide a venue for African American performers. A series of Company performances of La Traviata, where Evanti sang the part of Violetta, was hugely successful and attracted over 12,000 people. Over her career Evanti performed in twenty four operas.
Near the end of her life Evanti returned to Washington, D.C. where she coached and gave soprano voice lessons. Lillian Evans Evanti died on December 6, 1967 in Washington D.C.
Additional bio information:
"The Half Had Not Been Told Me" › African Americans in Lafayette Square, 1795-1965
Lillian Evanti (1890-1967)
Lyric soprano Lillian Evanti was the first African American to perform with a major European opera company, but she also maintained deep ties to her native Washington, D.C.
Lyric soprano Lillian Evanti was the first African American to perform with a major European opera company, but she also maintained deep ties to her native Washington, D.C. Born Lillian Evans in 1890, she graduated from Howard University in 1907, and thirteen years later, moved to Europe, where her professional opportunities were not as limited by discrimination. She made her professional debut in Nice, France in 1924, and while abroad, adopted the stage name Evanti, a more European-sounding combination of her last name and that of her husband, Roy Tibbs.
Evanti returned to Washington periodically and performed on Lafayette Square several times in the 1920s and 1930s, at both the Belasco Theater, one of the few venues in Washington where African Americans could perform before a desegregated audience, and the Roosevelt White House. In 1926, she sang at the Belasco with Marian Anderson as a part of the festivities surrounding the football game between Howard University and Lincoln University. Four years later, the Washington Post called her solo performance at the Belasco a "home-coming triumph." In 1935 she performed for the Roosevelt’s and fondly recalled her chat with Mrs. Roosevelt saying [she] "made me feel right at home."
The portrait of Lillian Evanti displayed here depicts her in costume as Rosina in Rossini's Barber of Seville. It is one of the most highly-regarded works by Lois Mailou Jones, who knew Evanti well and once described her final moments of work on this painting:
"A very unusual thing happened while I was doing the finishing touches. The Barber of Seville, the opera, came on over the radio. Of course, when the music came on, Lillian began to sing. There was the sparkle in her eyes and the gestures and everything. It was just what I needed to finish the portrait. I caught the spirit of her, which was just marvelous."
On August 28, 1943, shortly after she sat for this painting, Evanti made her most acclaimed performance in the capital, portraying Violetta in the National Negro Opera Company's La Traviata, which was staged on a barge floating in the Potomac River. Throughout the 1940s and 1950s she traveled to Latin America as a good-will ambassador on cultural outreach journeys organized by the State Department, and received decorations from the governments of the Dominican Republic, Haiti, Liberia and Nigeria. Beginning in the mid-1930s Evanti was an advocate for establishment of a national cultural center in Washington for classical and contemporary music, drama and dance (legislation establishing such a center was approved in 1958). Evanti, who was also a composer and a collector of works by African American artists, died in 1967 in Washington, DC.
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