Classical
United States of America
Adele Addison
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About Adele Addison
Hometown
Springfield, United States of America
Born
1925
Genre
Classical
A soprano who continued the work of Marian Anderson in forging paths for African American singers, Adele Addison was famous through the 1950s and ’60s—notably for recordings with Leonard Bernstein and the New York Philharmonic. Born in 1925 in New York City, she studied at Princeton and went on to appear with American opera companies in lyric roles like Mimì in La bohème and Micaela in Carmen. But it was in song and concert work that her acutely pitched and polished voice excelled.
Her chief strengths were Baroque (Bach, Handel) and contemporary composers (Copland, Barber, Lukas Foss, Ned Rorem—who described her artistry as “how an angel must sound”). In 1959, she dubbed in Dorothy Dandridge’s singing voice for the classic film of Porgy and Bess and, two years later, premiered Poulenc’s Gloria. But it proved a short-lived career, and by the end of the ’60s she was mainly teaching—albeit very successfully, with students like Dawn Upshaw.
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