New Butterfly

Since Oscar Hammerstein's Manhattan Opera gave up the ghost in 1910, New York's Metropolitan Opera has had no real competition. The only flies in its monopolistic ointment have been popular-priced hopefuls like the New York City Opera Co., which tried a short experimental season four years ago.

The experiment was a qualified success and the City Opera stuck. Each season its troupe has been improved and its repertory expanded. Last week the young company opened its new season with a first-class production of Puccini's Madame Butterfly. The star was Camilla Williams, the first Negro prima donna with a steady job in a major opera company.

With just five performances, modest Camilla Williams, now in her mid-twenties, has become the most talked-of postwar Cho-Cho-San. When she first sang the role last spring, critics were excited. Last week her performance was described with such superlatives as "rarely gifted," "remarkable," "superb."

Five years ago Camilla Williams, the daughter of a Virginia chauffeur, was teaching in a Danville Negro school. After she sang at Virginia State College, an alumni group raised a fund to help her continue her music studies. She studied in Philadelphia, working as a movie usher on the side. More help came from the Marian Anderson Award of $750 which she won in 1943 and 1944.

Besides Cho-Cho-San, last week she sang the leading role of Nedda in Leoncavallo's I Pagliacci, an opera she had never seen. This winter she will be soloist with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. As for ambitions to sing at the Met, chronically deaf to Negro voices, Camilla Williams says simply: "All opera singers aspire to it."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.