An ongoing illustrative history study
This piece originally posted 7/13/2021
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Throughout my time drawing/sharing these #blacklivesmatter biographies, I have mostly tried to steer away from stories about celebrity figures --athletes, actors, and other entertainers. I make an exception here to introduce you to composer and musician Louisa Melvin Delos Mars. Born in Providence, Rhode Island circa 1858, Louisa (neé Melvin) and her younger sister Carrie later moved to Boston and formed a duo, with Carrie on violin and cornet, and Louisa singing. It was clearly a musically gifted family; for her part Carrie eventually married famed vaudeville entertainer Sam Lucas, and their daughter (Louisa's niece) Maria, would eventually become music director at the Howard Theatre (Washington, D.C.) As for Louisa herself, her talent eventually led her to the New England Conservatory of Music, where she would become one of its very first black women graduates.
Perhaps more significantly, in 1889 Louisa composed and produced "Leoni, the Gypsy Queen," making her the first-ever black woman to produce an opera. "Leoni" premiered in Providence, Rhode Island and was also staged in Boston. 1889 was a groundbreaking year for women in opera --two other composers, Emma Marcy Raymond ("Dovetta"), and Emma Roberts Steiner ("Flourette") also shared the honour of being the first-ever women to produce an opera.
Louisa further composed and copyrighted four more full-length operettas between 1889 and 1896 --two in which she performed and sang. Sadly none of these manuscripts except "Leoni" survive, though two of them, "Fun at a Boarding School," and "Love in Disguise; or, Things Are Not What They Seem," received excellent reviews and much praise in the press. Louisa later married William Delos Mars and had two sons --unfortunately little is known about her life beyond 1896. She is thought to have died in 1926.
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