“Like many African American opera singers … she was first fully recognized for her talent not in the United States, but rather in Europe – an ocean away from the Jim Crow South where she had grown up.” In 1953, she became the first black singer in a principal role at La Scala; in 1956, she was the first African-American cast as a romantic lead – Gilda in Rigoletto, which she sang in whiteface – at the Met.