Nashville Opera Brings Free Performance February 13

To celebrate the life and musical gifts of a historic opera singer, the Nashville Opera will bring a special performance Thursday, Feb. 13, to the Hinton Music Hall of Middle Tennessee State University's Wright Music Building.

The free performance of "When Marian Sang: A Celebration of the Life of Marian Anderson" is open to the public and begins at noon Thursday. The performance is expected to last around 40 minutes. The stop at MTSU is part of the Nashville Opera's nine-stop tour in Nashville and surrounding areas.

Hinton Hall is located at 1439 Faulkinberry Drive, and free parking will be available at the nearby Reese Smith (baseball) parking lot. To access the lot, enter campus from Greenland Drive via Champion Way and turn right into the parking lot at the corner of Champion Way and Faulkinberry Drive.

"When Marian Sang: A Celebration of the Life of Marian Anderson" is a program centered on the young-adult friendly book, "When Marian Sang," by Pam Muñoz Ryan, which tells the life story of Anderson, the first Black opera singer to sing a principal role at the Metropolitan Opera in 1955.

The book incorporates the lyrics to several spirituals, including "My Country Tis of Thee," which she sang at her famous 1939 performance at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C.

H. Stephen Smith, an MTSU School of Music professor and coordinator of the Voice Studies program, is thrilled the Nashville Opera is bringing the performance to the Blue Raider campus.

"I had known about Marian Anderson since I was a kid," he said. "I'd heard about her before I had any dreams of being an opera singer, which I did become. I was working as an opera singer in Stockholm, Sweden, for many years before I came here to teach," said Smith, who has worked at MTSU since 1998.

Some of Nashville's best classically trained Black singers will perform the musical selections incorporated in the book in the upcoming performance by the Nashville Opera.

To learn more about the Nashville Opera's current season, visit nashvilleopera.org.

To learn more about MTSU's School of Music, visit music.mtsu.edu.