Scholarship Honors African-American Diva of the European Stage
Soprano Annabelle Bernard-Mercker '58 M.M., '59 A.D had no trouble finding the spotlight during her days at New England Conservatory. The African-American soprano sang starring roles in student performances and made her professional debut as Susanna in The Marriage of Figaro with NEC opera impresario Boris Goldovsky's New England Opera.
Nevertheless, a career in opera was still an elusive goal for a minority singer in the United States in 1959. When Bernard-Mercker won a prestigious Beebe Fellowship after finishing her Artist Diploma, she went to study at the Salzburg Mozarteum in Germany and never looked back. The move proved to be the right one: She was immediately engaged by Stuttgart's opera house and, two years later, made her debut with Deutsche Oper Berlin, singing Aida under Karl Böhm's direction. Jet magazine put her on its cover in 1962, hailing her as the "newest Negro opera star."
The New Orleans-born singer died on January 29, 2005, after long and brilliant career spent almost entirely overseas. This fall, Bernard-Mercker's widower, Karl-Ernst Mercker, endowed a scholarship in vocal studies to honor her memory.
"Annabelle would be very pleased by the scholarship," said Mercker. "I hope the students who receive the award can appreciate the barriers she faced and how strong she was to overcome them."
In addition to the scholarship funding, Karl-Ernst Mercker has given the NEC libraries a compilation of photos and programs from his wife's career, and a documentary of her life produced for her memorial service at Xavier University in New Orleans, where she received her undergraduate degree. The video includes archival photographs, films, and interviews.
For nearly four decades, Bernard-Mercker sang in all of Europe's major concert halls and toured the world as one of the Berlin Opera's principal sopranos. She also performed in the United States with the company, singing Cosi fan tutte in Washington D.C. in 1975--her first concert there since leaving the country more than 20 years earlier. In 1976, she became the first African American to perform a major role with the New Orleans Opera. At her retirement in 1998, Bernard-Mercker's repertoire included over 30 operas and 25 oratorios.
Even at the height of her career, however, the singer was never tempted to make a permanent return to the United States."I didn't want to lose what I had," she recalled in an interview years later. "I didn't want to end up working in Woolworth's."