Through a career filled with international opera fame, Christiane Eda-Pierre inspired and opened doors for Black classical musicians everywhere.
Christiane Eda-Pierre, a champion of Baroque theatre and champion of Black excellence, has died at the age of 88 on September 6, 2020. As France’s first Black international opera star, Eda-Pierre overcame racial barriers to pursue a successful career filled with critical acclaim. The French coloratura’s strong, agile, emotion-filled voice moved opera fans around the world. While she flourished in any role she embarked upon, her precision and flexibility in Baroque opera catapulted her into the international spotlight. Christiane Eda-Pierre was not simply another classical star; rather, she showed the world how a Black immigrant woman could infiltrate the ranks of and thrive in a White-dominated, elitist field.
The opera diva’s clear voice, her greatest strength, propelled her into numerous roles. Across a rich and varied career, Eda Pierre’s most popular recording on Spotify, with 19,046 plays, is “Vous soupirez, madame?,” from Berlioz’s Beatrice et Benedicte. Her voice floats effortlessly above the contralto, Helen Watts’s, voice, with careful ornamentation and bright color. Critics commented most frequently on not her acting, but her singing. According to the New York Times, Eda-Pierre “displayed a clear voice backed by good coloratura equipment and a very strong top.” The Chicago Tribune agreed, describing Eda-Pierre’s voice as “a clean lyric soprano with a slightly metallic edge to it,” filled with “delicacy and dramatic fervor when needed.”
Despite these outstanding reviews of her talents, other critics took the liberty of commenting on her race first. In 1981, the New York Amsterdam Times opened their review of the Verdi performances in New York City with the following statement: “Four unusually fine Black singers were cast in recent productions of Verdi Productions in the New York area.” There is no doubt that had a white person been cast in those roles, the reviewer for the New Amsterdam Times would not have begun with a pointed notice of their race, much less call them “unusually fine.” Although Eda-Pierre, among these other skillful Black singers, often had to endure commentary on her race first, and talents second, she prevailed against such prejudice and gained wide critical acclaim in the opera world.
Given her superlative ability to ornament passages with elegance, Eda-Pierre thrived in Mozart and French Baroque operas. She performed roles in many of Jean-Philippe Rameau’s operas, including Les Indes galantes (1962), Les Boréades (1964), and Zoroastre (1964). Through these performances, as well as her role in the first public performance of Rameau’s Dardanus, Eda-Pierre secured her place in the French opera stage and helped a movement to revive Rameau’s music. On tour with the Paris Opera at the Metropolitan Opera House in 1976, Eda-Pierre alternated nights with Welsh soprano Margaret Price as the Countess in Mozart’s Le Nozze di Figaro. This performance is now regarded as one of her greatest, but the New York Times’s John Rockwell felt that she lacked “that final solidarity of breath support that distinguishes great singers” and did not live up to the expectations of the other cast members.
This review did not deter her success on the international stage, however, as just four years later, Eda-Pierre went on to make her official Metropolitan Opera debut as Konstanze in Mozart’s The Abduction From the Seraglio. In contrast to their earlier remarks, the New York Times raved about this performance. “Any soprano who can sing Konstanze’s ‘Martern aller Arten’ decently is a better-than-average singer, and Miss Eda-Pierre’s accomplishments with this fiendish aria were far better than decent.” In the 1980 and 1981 seasons at the Met, Eda-Pierre went on to participate in sixteen performances, including as Gilda in Verdi’s Rigoletto and Antonia in Offenbach’s Les contes d’Hoffmann. These performances were just as widely successful. Rigoletto in Central Park drew a crowd of between 150,000 and 300,000. Writing in The Guardian, Barry Millington described her interpretation of Antonia as having “a real sense of drama and a plenitude of tone that contrasted favourably with the mechanical delivery of decoration and pitchpipe timbre of some notable exponents of the role.”
The Baroque talent’s roles were not limited to Baroque opera, however. She performed in a vast variety of roles, from canonical operas in the standard repertoire to contemporary works. These newer pieces include roles in Chaynes’s oratorio Pour un monde noir (1979), which was composed specifically for Eda-Pierre, as well as Erszebet (1983). Notably, in 1983 she created the angel role — sung by a soprano but referred to in the libretto as “he” — in Olivier Messaien’s Saint François d’Assise. Messaien had Eda-Pierre specifically in mind as he wrote this role, and she proved his instincts right. Her ability to sustain long, high notes with elegance served her well in this role, as she maintained careful control over her timbre to create a warm, not shrill, tone. Though her voice floats, it does so with depth and passion. After this performance with the Paris Opera at the Palais Garnier, it was not staged again for nearly ten years. These contemporary performances elucidate how Eda-Pierre, much to the dislike of racist critics, thrived in not only standard roles, but also stood at the frontiers of innovation in opera.
Eda-Pierre was born March 24, 1932 on the French-owned Caribbean island of Martinique. She grew up in an accomplished family that inspired her with their musical and professional endeavors. Her father, William, was a journalist, and her mother, Alice, was a piano teacher who brought music into her life from a young age. Her grandfather, Paul Nardal, was Martinique’s first Black engineer. Furthermore, Eda-Pierre’s aunt, Paulette Nardal, was the first Black woman to study at the Sorbonne, one of the world’s oldest universities. Nardal, who played an important role in the development of Black literary consciousness and Negritude, spent her professional life introducing Black culture to White elites, much like Eda-Pierre would go on to do with opera. Nardal also pursued international projects, as she introduced French intellectuals to the poetry of the Harlem Renaissance. Eda-Pierre’s home environment served as a place of cultivation for professional excellence and promoting Black culture in white spaces.
In 1950, she immigrated to Paris to advance her musical education, and in 1954 enrolled at the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique et de Danse (Paris Conservatory). She had originally planned to study piano there, following in her mother’s footsteps. However, the budding pianist soon switched to voice after her teacher, Jean Planel, heard her sing and encouraged her to pursue this talent. At the Paris Conservatory, Eda-Pierre studied under Swiss baritone Charles Panzera. With his guidance, she flourished at the school, winning a first prize of singing and lyric art. As one of the first Black students at the Conservatory, she had to work against racism to prove herself as a capable singer. In 2013, Eda-Pierre detailed her experience at the conservatory: “My eyes almost popped out of my head because I was like, ‘Me, a black girl at the Conservatory, it’s just not possible.’” It was more than possible, though, since in 1957, she graduated with honors.
The same year, Eda-Pierre made her opera debut with the Opera de Nice as Leila in Bizet’s Les Pêcheurs de Perles, a role she later took to America in 1966 to make her American debut with the Chicago Lyric Opera. After her first performance, she soon after earned the title role in Delibes’s Lakmé with the Opéra Comique. These early performances catapulted her to fame not only in France, but around the globe. The New York Times took note of her role as Lakmé in particular. “She breathed such life into the faded orientalism of ‘Lakmé’ that London’s leading music critic, Andrew Porter of The Financial Times, wrote after a detailed rave, ‘We must hear more of this remarkable singer!’”
Eda-Pierre performed in opera houses around the world, touring with French opera companies and earning roles in these cities’ own opera companies. Highlights from her international career include performances in Berlin, Hamburg, London, Lisbon, Wexford, Vienna, Salzburg, Moscow, Chicago, and New York. Beloved by the global opera community, Eda-Pierre took every opportunity to use her career to advance Black singers and musicians more broadly.
After retiring from the stage in the mid-1980s, Eda-Pierre dedicated many years to inspiring others in the way that her mentors did her. She became a teacher at the Paris Conservatory while continuing her recital career and engaged students with her impressive experience as a world-renowned opera star and strict pedagogical approach to singing. The Opéra Comique, with which she had performed for twelve years, opened an academy for young musicians in 2012 and gave Eda-Pierre the title of honorary president.
Eda-Pierre’s career had no shortage of impressive roles, and there is no doubt that she played a vital role in advancing the opportunities for Black women in opera. From starting as one of the first Black students at the Paris Conservatory to creating an international name for herself in an impressive array of roles, she exceeded society’s expectations. Her experiences position her as a hero of promoting global Black excellence. Her biographer, Catherine Marceline, noted how Eda-Pierre aimed to advance Black musicians. “[Eda-Pierre] said that the more often we put them on stage, the more it would end up becoming normal.” Throughout her extensive opera career, Eda-Pierre opened up opportunities for her successors, and her voice and integrity were far beyond what one would consider normal.