Marie Selika Williams (Madame Selika) [b.1849 – d.1937] was a opera (coloratura) soprano and the first black artist to perform at the White House. Known as the “queen of staccato,” she started her career as a young child studying music because of the support of a affluent local supporter.
Two years after her concert debut in 1878 Marie Selika Williams performed in the Green Room of the White House for an audience that included President Rutherford Hayes and First Lady Lucy Webb Hayes. Her performance included Verdi’s “Ernani, involami,” Thomas Moore’s “The Last Rose of Summer,” Harrison Millard’s “Ave Maria,” and Richard Mulder’s “Staccato Polka.” Her husband, Sampson Williams (stage name Signor Velosko), also an opera singer sang, by popular request, the well-known ballad “Far Away” by Bliss.
In the years following her performance at the White House, Williams continued to tour nationally performing for all black audiences. She interspersed her national performances with two tours of Europe, one from 1882-1885, where she gave a command performance in October of 1883 at St. James Hall for Queen Victoria. Other tour places included the West Indies and and Carnegie Hall in New York along with fellow black singers Flora Batson and Sissieretta Jones.
The prevalent racism of the era prevented black artists from being easily accepted in anything other than Minstrel shows, and blacks would not be welcomed to the American operatic stage until the 1930s. Despite Williams’s successful career and her status as the leading black prima donna of her time, she frequently struggled to obtain good professional management, even managing her own concerts on occasion.
Sources: mediadiversified.org; blackpast.org
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