Shirley Verrett

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shirley_Verrett
• http://www.shirleyverrett.com/
• http://www.operadis-opera-discography.org.uk/CLSIVERR.HTM

A Brief Bio

(1931 – 2010)

Shirley Verrett was an internationally renowned opera singer and concert recitalist. Her performances and recordings marked her as one the leading singers in the post-Marian Anderson generation of African American classical musicians.

Shirley Verrett was the second of six children born to Leon and Elvira Verrett. Prior to Shirley Verrett’s birth, the parents had converted to Seventh-Day Adventism and the Verrett children were raised in a somewhat restrictive religious environment in New Orleans. As her first voice teacher, Leon Verrett had the dream of his daughter becoming a recitalist in the tradition of Marian Anderson or Dorothy Maynor. In an effort to escape the overt racism in the south, Leon Verrett packed his family and moved to Oxnard, California in 1943. In 1948, at her father’s encouragement, Verrett entered and won a preliminary round of the Atwater Kent Vocal Competition. She was heard by celebrated baritone John Charles Thomas who offered her the opportunity to study voice with the celebrated soprano Lotte Lehman at the Music Academy of the West, but Verrett turned down the offer down. The following year she matriculated at the Seventh-Day Adventist’s Oakwood College in Huntsville, Alabama, but stayed only one semester before returning to Los Angeles to become engaged to real estate broker and sheriff deputy, James Carter.

She and Carter married in 1951 and Verrett sold real estate for several years in the San Fernando Valley.