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will endow a real conservatory at which such persons may find some genuine opportunity and encouragement in their development in their days of struggle. In spite of all the difficulties, however, there have been singers who have risen to very high things in their art. Even before the Civil War the race produced one of the first rank in Elizabeth Taylor Greenfield, who came into prominence in 1851. This artist, born in Mississippi, was taken to Philadelphia and there cared for by a Quaker lady. The young woman did not soon reveal her gift to her friend, thinking that it might be frowned upon as something too worldly. Her guardian learned of it by accident, however, and one day surprised her by asking, "Elizabeth, is it true that thee can sing?" "Yes," replied the young woman in confusion. "Let me hear thee." And Elizabeth sang; and her friend, realizing that she had a voice of the first quality, proceeded to give her the best instruction that it was possible to get. Elizabeth Taylor Greenfield had a marvelous voice embracing twenty-seven notes, reaching from the sonorous bass of a baritone to the highest soprano. A voice with a range of more than three octaves naturally attracted much attention in both England and America, and comparisons with Jenny Lind, then at the height of her great fame, were frequent. In the next generation arose Madame Selika, a cultured singer of the first rank, and one who by her arias and operatic work generally, as well as by her mastery of language, won great success on the continent of Europe as well as in England and America. The careers of some later singers are so recent as to be still fresh in the public memory; some in fact may still be heard. It was in 1887 that Flora Batson entered on the period of her greatest success. She was a ballad singer and her work at its best was of the sort that sends an audience into the wildest enthusiasm. In a series of temperance meetings in New York she sang for ninety consecutive nights, with never-failing effect, one song, "Six Feet of Earth Make Us All One Size." Her voice exhibited a compass of three octaves, but even more important than its range was its remarkable sympathetic quality. Early in the last decade of the century appeared also Mrs. Sissieretta Jones, whose voice at once commanded attention as one of unusual richness and volume, and as one exhibiting especially the plaintive quality ever present in the typical Negro voice.Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.
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