Helen L. Phillips, 86; Soprano Broke Color Barrier at the Met in 1947

Helen L. Phillips, a soprano who broke the color barrier among singers at the Metropolitan Opera in New York City seven years before Marian Anderson’s historic 1955 debut, has died. She was 86.

Phillips died of heart failure July 27 at New York’s Isabella Geriatric Center, her nurse said.

The opera company had no formal policy barring nonwhites from appearing on its stage, but Phillips became its first black chorister when she was hired as an extra for five performances of Mascagni’s “Cavalleria Rusticana” from December 1947 through February 1948, said Met archivist Jeff McMillan.

In 1933, a troupe of black dancers performed with the Met, he said.

In January 1955, Anderson became the first black singer to perform a major role at the Met, portraying Ulrica in Verdi’s “A Masked Ball.”

A native of St. Louis who graduated from Lincoln University in Jefferson City, Mo., Phillips went on to build a career as a soloist. She sang at Manhattan’s Town Hall in 1953 and with orchestras in Madrid and St. Louis, where she also sang with the opera company.

In 1954, Phillips sang the part of Queenie in a production of “Show Boat” at New York’s City Center.

She performed more than 500 times as part of a State Department entertainment tour of Austria and West Germany.

Phillips later became a schoolteacher and vocal coach.

The first black singer to sign a full-time contract with the Met chorus was Elinor Harper, who made her debut in 1962.

Information on Phillips’ survivors was not immediately available.