Betty Allen, one of the first African American singers to reach prominence on the international opera stage, died June 22 of complications from kidney disease at a hospital in Valhalla, N.Y. She was 82.
If contralto Marian Anderson in the 1930s and 1940s represented the first generation of black opera stars, then Allen belonged to the second, along with Leontyne Price and Shirley Verrett and Grace Bumbry.
At the height of her vocal power from the 1950s through the 1970s, Allen “sang with a glory of sound that would honor any performance," wrote Washington Post critic Paul Hume. Even as a performer in her 20s, she earned the respect of conductor and composer Leonard Bernstein, who invited her to sing in his “Jeremiah" symphony.
Allen was a mezzo-soprano, meaning that her voice was lower than that of a soprano. While sopranos tend to play glamorous or delicate women, mezzos are often cast as evil or brooding ones, and Allen played those roles to their fullest.
She made her formal operatic debut in 1964 at the Teatro Coln in Buenos Aires as Jocasta in Stravinsky's “Oedipus Rex"; Jocasta hangs herself at the end. She said Azucena, the raving gypsy in Giuseppe Verdi's “Il Trovatore," was her favorite role because “she's absolutely nuts."
With the Metropolitan Opera, she sang in “Four Saints in Three Acts," an opera by Virgil Thomson and Gertrude Stein. Thomson, the highly respected composer and music critic, would later write music specifically for her.
Off stage, Allen distinguished herself as a teacher and mentor. She was the executive director of the Harlem School of the Arts and taught at the Manhattan School of Music, among other places. She was particularly devoted to introducing classical music to children who, like her, had grown up in poverty.
