“My paper is entitled ‘Sissieretta Jones and Performing the Prima Donna.’ Sissieretta Jones (1868-1933) was an African American soprano who performed as a concert singer in the 1880s and early 1890s, and then performed operatic excerpts as part of the Black Patti Troubadours, a vaudeville troupe, from 1896 until 1915. The paper, and the dissertation chapter from which it is drawn, focus on how Sissieretta Jones performed the role of the opera ‘diva’ throughout her career, whether on the concert or vaudeville stage.
Sissieretta Jones is part of my larger dissertation project, as yet untitled, on African American opera performers in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. I focus especially on performers who blended genres (in the case of opera on the vaudeville stage) or roles (such as singers who wrote their own compositions) in order to create performing opportunities.”
Fellow graduate students in Musicology, Dan Fister and Felipe Guz Tinoco, will present papers at the Society for Ethnomusicology.
