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The Gift of Music

Frances Marsh-Ellis (CFA'56,'64) chose music education and activism over an opera career

When Frances Marsh-Ellis began studying opera and musical theater at the College of Fine Arts, she aspired to a career as a high-profile opera singer and planned to succeed Leontyne Price, the first African American to sing with the Metropolitan Opera. But despite early successes in Boston and then New York, she chose to give up this dream to work in arts education and activism.

Born in 1933, Marsh-Ellis (CFA'56,'64) grew up during a time of great racial unrest, although her middle-class Montclair, New Jersey, existence was relatively devoid of the violence and deep prejudice plaguing much of the country. Her father was a member of the national YMCA staff, her mother was a pianist and ran a piano studio for children in her home, and Marsh-Ellis's own childhood centered on violin, piano, and ballet lessons, as well as community and school choral performances. At the age of sixteen, she began training with a professional vocal coach. After high school, she studied opera at Oberlin College for two years, then transferred to BU, where she would earn a B.F.A. and an M.F.A.

"My singing career," she wrote in a 1990 letter, "was nurtured and laboriously developed by Boston University's superb faculty. Such fond memories I do have of the many roles sung at the BU Huntington Avenue Theatre!" In Boston, she sang in Threepenny Opera and Carmen, and she acted in a significant revival of The Crucible, with playwright Arthur Miller directing. She frequently worked under legendary opera director and conductor Sarah Caldwell at BU. "You didn't play when you were working with her," says Marsh-Ellis, who fondly remembers Caldwell as a tough mentor. "There was no such thing as rest. We just thought we were Broadway. We thought we were just it. And that's what led me to do the things I've done. Nothing's too big to tackle." After finishing her master's, Marsh-Ellis moved to New York, where she found work as a soloist with the Eva Jessye American Concert Ensemble. From there, her plan was to set to work immediately toward her Metropolitan Opera dream. But her father had a different idea: he thought that gaining experience in teaching would benefit her singing career, and he persuaded her to move to Baton Rouge and spend just one year teaching music at Southern University.

Louisiana was a different world for Marsh-Ellis, who was shocked to find that she could not eat where she pleased and was expected to weather racist insults quietly. Instead of hurrying back to New York, however, she took these experiences, common injustices against Southern blacks, as signs that she was needed. She decided to stay. "I was determined to expose the people of the Deep South to the wonderful artistic qualities to which I had been exposed at the Boston University theater and music departments," says Marsh-Ellis, who retired in 1989 from her dual posts of professor and chair of vocal music at Southern University.

During her thirty-two years at the university, she trained choral groups, staged musical productions, and taught courses in music history, voice, and the contributions of blacks to American music, among other subjects. She conceived, produced, and directed the first-ever amateur production of Porgy and Bess, in 1976, working for a full year to convince the Gershwin family to grant permission and pressing on despite heavy opposition from within the white community. The first black to sing at a Louisiana governor's inauguration, Marsh-Ellis performed at every inauguration for decades. She gave other performances all over the world and won numerous prestigious awards, proving to her students that talent and hard work have the power to remove barriers.

Her work as an activist, whose seed was planted by her socially conscious parents, was no less exhaustive. Venturing into the Louisiana cane fields, she helped laboring blacks learn to write and prepare to vote. She delivered speeches throughout Louisiana on ethnicity and the arts, and she joined civil right demonstrations, both on campus and off. She was national director of the arts for the African-American women's culture and service organization The Links, Incorporated, and participated in panel discussions such as the Arts Advocates Workshop, sponsored by the Working Committee for Affirmative Action, in Princeton, New Jersey. "I have opened doors by singing," she told the Baton Rouge Sunday Advocate in 1987. "I was the first black in [Baton Rouge's exclusive] Camelot Club. I went in as a singer. I was the first black to sing at a gubernatorial inauguration."

Marsh-Ellis attributes much of her success to the education she received at CFA and is expressing her gratitude by making an estate gift to the College. "I used the talent, skills, and humanistic experiences acquired at Boston University to carry me through the heat of the Civil Rights movement," she wrote. The admiration is mutual: in 1991the University presented Marsh-Ellis with an Alumni Award for service to community. - Kelly Cunningham