Black women bring a host of influences & ideologies with them to opera as well as their spirituality, their strengths & passions. The exclusion of blacks from opera for so many generations impoverished both the artists & the artistic world from which they were barred. Imagine if Leontyne Price had been born 50 years earlier, during a time when she would not have been allowed on an American opera stage. This book not only supplies portraits of the greatest artists for future generations of students of black art & culture, but also rescues from historys shadows the lost legacies of geniuses born too soon. The wonderful, inspiring stories of dozens of Black women in opera and classical music, including in-depth portraits of: Sissieretta Jones, Eliazbeth Taylor-Greenfield, Marie Selika, Flora Batson, Marian Anderson, Anne Wiggins Brown, Dorothy Maynor, Leontyne Price, Martina Arroyo, Grace Bumbry, Shirley Verrett, Kathleen Battle, Jessye Norman, Leona Mitchell, [and] Barbara Hendricks [Publisher description].