Of the many things opera divas are known for—mercurial temper, exacting discipline, brittle performance standards—vigorously challenging social mores is not one of them. But for star mezzo soprano Barbara Smith Conrad, whose formative experiences as a singer intersected with the bracing, painful and ultimately liberating ways of the racial conflicts of the mid-twentieth century, prying open closed minds wasn’t just necessary in order to open doors, it was the predicate of her own artistic coming of age.
Conrad, born in 1940, is the subject of the documentary film When I Rise: The Story of Barbara Smith Conrad, which premiered in Austin at the South by Southwest (SXSW) Film Festival. The film documents her humble Northeast Texas origins, unlikely casting opposite a white male classmate in a UT production of the opera Dido and Aeneas and triumphant emergence on the other side of the controversy that ensued, one that went all the way up to the Texas legislature.
“The idea of just singing in my first opera was pretty thrilling,“ Conrad said from her home in New York City. “I auditioned, and went to class the next morning, and people stood up and started clapping … and I discovered very quickly that I had been chosen for that role.”
About Dido and Aeneas, Conrad said, “It was such a shock. One day you’re just a student, excited about doing your first opera and whatever else you’re trying to get through and learn, and suddenly you’re this … this figure. That Barbara Smith.”
The youngest of five children, Conrad was born in Queen City, TX, near the Texas-Arkansas border. She spent her early years shuttling back and forth between Queen City and Pittsburg, TX, which she considers her home base. She describes Center Point in Pittsburg as a thriving community and exciting place to grow up.
Conrad explained that there was no distinct moment at which she chose to study operatic singing. She was born into a music-saturated world, reared within a musical family and was the beneficiary of a rich, diverse sonic environment that included church hymns and anthems, as well as classical music.
“First of all, it was a family of musicians and singers,” Conrad said. “My mother had an uncle who was apparently a very fine fiddler, and he was able to command more attention than the average person of that era because he was that good. The only time I ever met him—his name was Ruff Floyd—he was a shoemaker and apparently was very good at that. I was fascinated by him, of course, because I had never seen such a person,” she said with a chuckle.
“My mother had a beautiful voice … the voices [in my family] mostly came from my maternal side,” Conrad said. “My grandmother had a fabulous voice [with] a huge range.”
Conrad credits her talented siblings, both of whom pursued academic study of music (sister Connie at Bishop College, brother Denard at Prairie View A&M), with providing her a point of entry into classical music.
“In the immediate family, my sister Connie was the sort of Leontyne Price kind of sound—that thrilling, high soprano singing,” Conrad said. “Denard, my brother next to me in age, was the wunderkind. He was the kid that could play Mozart sonatas when he was 10.”
Conrad arrived at the University of Texas at Austin in 1956 at the tender age of 16 while the campus was still segregated. She was forced to live in an off-campus house with all the other black female students. Despite that, she can recall no real social impairments arising from that situation, and she managed to form interracial friendships that not only buttressed her emotionally but also helped her weather the storm created by “her boundaries-be-damned” stage debut.
It was Josephine Antoine, of the voice faculty at UT, who barged in on young Barbara while she was practicing and first offered her the titular role in Henry Purcell‘s Baroque classic Dido and Aeneas. Based on Book IV of Virgil’s Aeneid, it recounts the love story between Queen Dido of Carthage and the Trojan hero Aeneas, and the Queen’s despair at his abandonment.
“I knew nothing of what that [opera] was, specifically that piece,” Conrad said. “I knew of Marion Anderson and Paul Robeson and those wonderful people, but I hadn’t yet gotten to that point in my musical career.” Church and school singing had been her only on-stage experience up to that point.
Besides the disregard for the color line, the presentation of interracial romance—a delicate subject even among some African Americans—within context of an often-performed European opera was more cognitive dissonance than most Texans in high places were willing to abide. State legislators put pressure on UT President Logan Wilson and the Board of Regents, warning of cuts in funding if Conrad wasn't removed from the cast.
It was Dr. E. William Doty, founder and dean of the College of Fine Arts at UT, who had the difficult task of informing Barbara that she was not going to appear in the opera. The Daily Texan ran a front-page story headlined "Negro Girl Withdrawn From UT Opera Cast" two days before the show's opening.
“It was very tough for [Dr. Doty], in retrospect, because he liked me as a student,” Conrad said. “I was eager to learn, because I felt so understandably far behind a lot of these kids that had private tutoring and all of those things that were completely foreign to me.”
The stated reason for Conrad’s removal from the production was concern for her safety. No production with Conrad in the Dido role was ever performed. “It was too volatile at that point. I was bombarded with press and a lot of out-of-control people,” Conrad said coyly. Conrad was never afforded an opportunity to plead her case in person to the higher-ups. She never even met UT President Logan Wilson.
Despite the injustice, Barbara received strong support from many on campus, including music school classmates (a petition protesting her removal gathered 1500 signatures) and Dr. Doty. Once the story blew up in the national media, she even got a call from Harry Belafonte, the legendary singer, actor and activist, who offered to pay her tuition should she decide to transfer to another school.
“I wasn’t getting any sleep, because everybody in the world seemed to be calling, at [my] doorstep, trying to get photographs [etc.], the usual mayhem,” Conrad said. She was eventually driven back home to Center Point by her house mother to confer with her parents. After some agonizing, she decided to remain at UT, and went on to graduate in 1959.
In Conrad’s telling, leaving UT would have been an act of capitulation and required abandoning the relatively cozy—if segregated—social environment she remembers as the norm. “I don’t know what in me was so powerful, but I knew that the last thing in the world I was going to do would be, essentially, to run away,” Conrad said.
In refusing to turn away from the challenge of refusing to disappear, Conrad turned toward what eventually became a stellar singing career and international renown. But she remained distant from UT until President Peter Flawn reached out to her in 1984. She has since become an artistic adviser and ambassador for the American Spirituals Initiative at the Briscoe Center for American History, which helmed When I Rise; been named a distinguished alumna; and has had a Presidential Scholarship endowed in her name.
The Texas Legislature has also, if belatedly, come around. In 2009 Conrad received recognition in the form of a resolution by both houses of the Legislature. Rep. Sylvester Turner (D-Houston) even escorted her to the Austin premiere (pictured above).
Conrad says watching the film was a cathartic experience, and she credits it for illuminating things about her experiences that were less than obvious at the time they occurred.
“The thing that would always bother my mother was that I would never allow myself to cry, because I was too angry to cry,” Conrad said. “That’s how I interpret it now. Something inside of me just got very still, and very resolved, that I was not going to be thrown out of my home state. It just felt [that] tears were not possible.”
About When I Rise, Conrad says, “The thing that happened while viewing the film here in New York is that I’m sure that it must have been a good 10 or 15 minutes that the tears just wouldn’t stop rolling. And it was such a release—it was an ancient release. I had no idea any of that was still stored. But I saw this young girl who I recognized as myself, and I gave her permission to let go.”
© Dallas Examiner. All rights reserved.
© Dallas Examiner. All rights reserved.
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