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Marian Anderson and stage director Herbert Graf, rehearsing at the Metropolitan Opera House, New York, January 1955.
flipFlip to Marian Anderson visits with a young student in a Philadelphia public school, July 31, 1954.
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A man holding a book and a woman singing are on a stage with props.

Credit: Marian Anderson Collection, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, University of Pennsylvania

On January 7, 1955, Marian Anderson broke another racial barrier when she became the first African-American to sing for New York's famed Metropolitan Opera Company. Now fifty-eight, she made her operatic debut on January 7, 1955 as the fortune teller Ulrica in Giuseppe Verdi's Un ballo in maschera.

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