University of Delaware
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UpDate - Vol. 16, No. 24, March 20


               Soprano balances family and career roles
     Marie Hadley Robinson, music, has a life as rich as of
the plot of any opera in which she has sung. Nothing-from
her birth on a former slave plantation to her childhood as
the daughter of a wealthy family's chauffeur to her
successful career as a European opera singer-is ordinary.
     As a artist, Robinson has been ahead of her time
breaking color barriers by singing roles never before
performed by black sopranos. On a personal level, Robinson's
life is rich in family, with more than 800 relatives who can
trace their roots back generations to an influential Georgia
white man and the black woman he loved. The extended
familiy's annual, four-day summer reunions are eagerly
anticipated.
     In her immediate family, there are 14 brothers and
sisters, all highly educated, most of whom hold master's
degrees and three of whom have doctorates. Then, there are
the famous in-laws-1936 Berlin Olympic silver medalist Mack
Robinson and his brother, Jackie, who broke major league
baseball's color barrier in 1947.
     In writing about Robinson's life, one has to stop and
ask, "Where to begin?"
     At the beginning is the 3,000-acre Pebble Hill
Plantation in Georgia, where Robinson was born to Dennis and
Rosetta Hadley, who were among the more than 40 black
families who lived and worked there.
     Pebble Hill's gracefully landscaped grounds and elegant
mansion are now a popular tourist attraction in Robinson's
hometown of Thomasville. More than 22,000 people tour the 28-
room house each year, especially when it is decorated at
Christmas time.
     Robinson's father was a chauffeur for Elizabeth Ireland
Poe, who owned the plantation until her death in 1978, and
who was affectionately known by all as "Miss Pansey."
     Robinson's great-grandfather Simon Hadley, who never
married, was the son of a wealthy state legislator who once
owned Pebble Hill. Hadley is buried on the plantation,
despite having been disowned by his family for having five
children with an African slave woman named Rebecca. One of
those children, Richard, was Robinson's grandfather.
     "I especially remember Pebble Hill at Christmas,"
Robinson said. "When the original black church on the
plantation burned, Miss Pansey had it rebuilt. Every
Christmas, we would have a big church program. Miss Pansey
was always there, singing right along with the rest of us."
     While her older brothers and sisters had gone to school
exclusively on the plantation, Robinson spent some of her
years at segregated public schools in Thomasville. Visiting
piano and voice teachers taught her music.
     Her first piano teacher was one of her older sisters,
Dr. Rosa Hadley who recently retired from Oakwood College in
Huntsville, Ala. She learned classical music and hymns, but
as the child of a Baptist deacon, she was forbidden to
listen to jazz.
     After Robinson graduated from high school, Miss Pansey
paid for her college education, just as she had for many of
Robinson's brothers and sisters.
     Robinson earned her bachelor's degree from Florida A&M
and her master's and doctoratal degrees from Florida State
University. In 1973, after graduation, she won first prize
in the Palm Beach Civic Opera auditions and went on to
become a finalist in the Vi Concurso Internacional de Canto
in Rio de Janeiro, earning her the prestigious Duiguid
Fellowship Award. As a result, she went on to be coached and
audition abroad for a year.
     While it seems quite glamorous to think of a young
rising star singing in Europe, in Robinson's case, she and
her husband, Emmett, her former college accompanist, were
married and parents. They left for Europe with five young
children in tow.
     "I would never have been able to do this without the
support of my husband," Robinson stressed. "Once we were in
Europe, I traveled alone most of the time. He stayed home
with the children. Back then," she said, "Europe was the
place to be. You had to be trained in Europe to be taken
seriously. Being engaged by a European opera house was a
dream come true. Practically speaking, it was a great job:
You were considered a state employee, and your yearly
contract included insurance and retirement benefits."
     At the end of her year of training, Robinson was hired
by the Graz Opera, where she was principal soloist for three
years. During her tenure there she was hailed by critics as
the finest Tosca of her generation, and she became the first
black soprano to portray the role of Sieglinde in Die
Walkure.
     "When you're employed by an opera company, you always
stay fresh," she said. "If you're not in production, you're
in rehearsal. You may start preparing a year ahead of time
for a new role. You also share the smaller roles. I was the
first lady in The Magic Flute and the second lady in the
first opera in The Ring Cycle. That sort of work gives you a
great feeling of being part of an ensemble."
     Subsequent engagements took her to Frankfurt, Berlin,
Prague, Vienna, Munich, Zurich and on a tour of Japan with
the Deutsche Staatsoper Berlin. She made her Italian debut
at the Teatro Tegio Torino.
     After Graz, she was the principal soloist with the
National Theatre in Mannheim for six years. As the years
passed and Robinson's children entered their teens, she and
her husband decided it was imperative for their children to
go to high school in the United States.
     While her performing commitments would keep her in
Europe another few years, her husband and the children
returned to the U.S. and settled in Reston, Va., to be near
relatives. When Robinson did rejoin her family, she was
caught in a time of transition.
     "The tide was turning in America. More and more
conductors and stage directors wanted to work with American-
trained musicians. Those of us who had trained in Europe
were now looked upon as 'American imports.'"
     Although she sang actively for almost two years, mostly
in the Midwest, the preference for American-trained singers
eventually took its toll.
     "If I was in Europe, I would still be singing," she
said. "Here, people would tell me how sorry they were, but
they just couldn't book all of the musicians they already
knew. Eventually, I also realized some of the roles had to
go to younger women. I decided that if I was not going to
have a really big career, I would like to help someone
else," Robinson said. She decided to teach.
     Robinson went to her local library, scanned the want
ads in The Chronicle of Higher Education for mid-sized east
coast schools that were hiring in their departments of music
and applied to the first ad she saw- UD's. She was
interviewed and subsequently hired and she's been here ever
since.
     In addition to teaching German diction and other
classes, she has 20 private students, 14 of whom are voice
majors. On campus, she has co-directed operatic productions
of Medium, Gianni Schicchi, The Stoned Guest and The Secret
Marriage. A member of the board of OperaDelaware and active
in Opera Ebony, Robinson said she strongly believes in
pushing her students to compete in voice competitions.
     "I urge my students to get into competitions early to
help prepare them to face auditions eventually. They're
usually 22 or 23 when they graduate, and I encourage them to
continue auditioning for summer programs, regional opera
companies, roles as understudies. When they finish graduate
school in their late 20s or early 30s, then they are ready
to travel."
     Robinson said all of her children love opera, none more
than her son Gregory, a graduate of Virginia Tech and a
captain in the U.S. Marines.
     "He was part of Operation Desert Storm during his last
semester of school," Robinson said. "He got a chance to come
home, and he spent some time audiotaping 10 operas to take
back with him."
     Two other children are following in their mother's
footsteps, seeking careers in music. Daughter, Angelyn, is a
voice student at UD and son, Norwood, earned his master's
degree from Baltimore's Peabody Institute last year. Local
audiences may have seen him in OperaDelaware's production of
The Magic Flute.
     Mother and son sang together last year at the Kennedy
Center in a gala to celebrate the 90th birthday of Todd
Duncan, who originated the role of Porgy in Porgy and Bess.
     Another son, Emmett, who attended Fiske University, is
a community police officer at UD, and Carl, who played
football at Hampton University, teaches elementary school in
Reston, Va.
     Looking back over her own career, Robinson said she has
sung just about every operatic role she hoped to sing. Now,
Robinson added, she enjoys keeping in touch with her large
extended family, many of whom correspond by e-mail, and
always makes plans to attend the summer reunions.
                                                -Beth Thomas