Abbie Mitchell

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Abbie Mitchell (25 September 1884 – 16 March 1960), also billed as Abbey Mitchell, was an American soprano opera singer who created the role of "Clara" in George Gershwin's Porgy and Bess in 1935.

Mitchell began her career in musical comedy with Will Marion Cook's Clorindy; or, the Origin of the Cakewalk in 1898. She performed with George Walker and Bert Williams, Black Patti's Troubadours, and in the operetta The Red Moon (1908) by Bob Cole and J. Rosamond Johnson. In 1919, Mitchell went to Europe with Cook's Southern Syncopated Orchestra. Mitchell and Cook were married in 1898.

Following this, she began performing on the concert stage and performing opera in addition to teaching. She performed in New York and taught at the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama.

Lee De Forest made a short film Songs of Yesteryear (1922) of Mitchell singing, using his DeForest Phonofilm sound-on-film process. This film is preserved in the Maurice Zouary film collection at the Library of Congress.

Her 1935 appearance in Porgy and Bess was her final stage appearance. She died in New York City on 16 March 1960.

[edit] References

McGinty, Doris Evans, '"As Large As She Can Make It": The Role of Black Women Activists in Music, 1880–1945' in Locke, Ralph P., and Cyrilla Barr, editors, Cultivating Music in America: Women Patrons and Activists since 1860, 1997, University of California Press. (Footnote 33)
Peterson, Bernard, Profiles of African American Stage Performers and Theatre People, 1816-1960, 2000, Greenwood Press p.187.