Bess Disembodied: Camilla Williams's (Re)Sounding Black Womanhood in Porgy and Bess

Abstract

In the fall of 1951, Columbia Masterworks Records released the first complete recording of George Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess, featuring lyric soprano Camilla Williams (1919– 2012) and bassbaritone Lawrence Winters (1915– 1965) in the title roles. Just five years prior to recording the album, Williams made her operatic debut performing the leading role of CioCioSan in the New York City Opera Company’s first production of Giacomo Puccini’s Madama Butterfly. With this performance, Williams made history as the first Black singer to be regularly contracted with a leading American opera company, and she also became the first Black woman to perform the role of Butterfly. Williams went on to have a successful international career full of other historic achievements: she was the first Black singer to perform a main role at the Vienna State Opera, she sang the “StarSpangled Banner” on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial during the 1963 March on Washington, and she became the first Black professor of voice at Indiana University in 1977. Throughout her prolific career, Williams frequently performed Butterfly on various national and international stages, and critics widely praised her for bringing an unparalleled degree of authenticity and sensitivity to a role that would remain her most celebrated and enduring.1 Unlike the elaborately staged and embodied performances of Butterfly for which she was renowned, however, Williams never performed in a fully staged production of Porgy and Bess. In fact, Williams refused to perform in staged productions of the opera, which she disavowed for its stereotypical stagings and