Brice, Carol (Lpvette Hawkins)
Brice, Carol (Lpvette Hawkins)
Brice, Carol (Lpvette Hawkins), black American contralto; b. Sedalia, N.C., April 16, 1918; d. Norman, Okla., Feb. 15, 1985. She received training at Palmer Memorial Inst. in Sedalia, at Talladega (Ala.) Coll. (B.Mus., 1939), and from Francis Rogers at the Juilliard School of Music in N.Y. (1939–43). She first attracted attention when she sang in The Hot Mikado at the N.Y. World’s Fair (1939); she was also chosen to sing at a concert for President Roosevelt’s third inauguration in 1941 and was the first black American to win the Naumburg Award (1943). Among her many stage roles were Addie in Regina, Maude in Pinion’s Rainbow, Maria in Porgy and Bess, Queenie in Showboat, and Harriet Tubman in Gentlemen, Be Seated. She was a member of the Vienna Volksoper (1967–71), then taught at the Univ. of Okla. (from 1974). With her husband, the baritone Thomas Carey, she founded the Cimarrón Circuit Opera Co.
—Nicolas Slonimsky/Laura Kuhn/Dennis McIntire