Despised Icon

2008 five CD set from Dame Janet Baker, the British mezzo-soprano who has achieved international fame and adulation from generations of music fans.

Beyond the Music is a special 15-CD edition celebrating contralto Marian Anderson, the first Black singer at the Met. On April 9, 1939, a cold Easter Sunday, a woman in a fur coat walked down the steps of Lincoln Memorial, ready to perform open-air after being refused the largest hall in Washington because she was Black. As contralto Marian Anderson raised her voice to sing the words of My Country, ’Tis of Thee to the 75,000 who gathered to listen to her, an unforgettable historic moment unfolded. The great voice of “The Lady from Philadelphia,” first discovered by her local neighborhood, took her to global fame on the stages of Europe, Asia, and America. She became the first Black woman to perform at the Met in New York, she sang for presidents and kings, was honored with the Presidential Medal of Freedom, and with her dignity, courage, and unwavering belief in equal rights she became an icon in her supportive role for the civil rights movement.