Atlanta to La Scala

The house lights dimmed on La Scala's gilt and maroon, and the packed audience sat back to size up an unprecedented debutante: Coloratura Soprano Mattiwilda Dobbs, 27, of Atlanta, Ga., the first Negro ever to win a principal role at La Scala.

The curtain parted on Rossini's frisky operatic romp, An Italian Lady in Algiers, and the crowd saw Coloratura Dobbs, cast as the dusky charmer Elvira, in stage center, surrounded by sumptuously costumed Algerian nobles. Her part had no arias, but her bright, sure voice led sweetly and gracefully a series of swiftly paced quartets, quintets and sextets. When it was all over, she got a round of warmhearted applause that was echoed next day by the press.

Mattiwilda was born the fifth of six daughters of John W. Dobbs, an Atlanta railway mail clerk who is also a vice-chairman of Georgia's Republican State Central Committee. Her name was concocted from those of her maternal grandmother (Mattie Wilda), and she sees no reason to change it: "People usually remember it." She sang solos in Atlanta's First Congregational Church as a youngster, went from that to music studies at Atlanta's Spelman College. In 1946 she shipped off to Manhattan to study voice, but prudently supplemented her musical training with teaching credits, took a master's degree in Spanish at Columbia's Teachers College.

Three years ago her voice won her a $3,000 John Hay Whitney fellowship, and she went for advanced study in Paris. Then came a first prize in Geneva's 1951 International Music Competition (other noted winners: the Metropolitan's Nell Rankin and Victoria de los Angeles). Finally, in Holland, she sang the lead in Stravinsky's Nightingale, and the British magazine Opera flatly called her "the outstanding coloratura of her generation."

With her sure voice and mounting experience, Soprano Dobbs is ready for almost any coloratura role that may come her way. Most of the eight she already knows (e.g., Gilda in Rigoletto; Olympia in Tales of Hoffmann) call for light-skinned singers, but she has no objection to wearing light makeup. "If white singers make up to play Aida or Otello," she says, "why shouldn't Negroes be able to make up for roles like Lucia di Lammermoor?"

"I never believe anything until it happens," says Mattiwilda Dobbs. But she is already scheduled to sing the big coloratura role in Strauss's Ariadne auf Naxos at the Glyndebourne Festival next summer. Her records of Mozart's Zaide (Poly-music) and Bizet's Pearl Fishers (Renaissance) are winning top notices. Impresario Sol Hurok, who is bringing her back to the U.S. next season, has his eye fixed on the Metropolitan for Mattiwilda.

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