Opera Ebony is an African-American opera company.

Performances of Mozart in Harlem

Harlem

Harlem is a neighborhood in the New York City borough of Manhattan, which since the 1920s has been a major African-American residential, cultural and business center. Originally a Dutch village, formally organized in 1658, it is named after the city of Haarlem in the Netherlands...

 to African-American Heritage concerts in Iceland

Iceland

Iceland , described as the Republic of Iceland, is a Nordic and European island country in the North Atlantic Ocean, on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. Iceland also refers to the main island of the country, which contains almost all the population and almost all the land area. The country has a population...

. Gershwin in Moscow to Duke Ellington

Duke Ellington

Edward Kennedy "Duke" Ellington was an American composer, pianist, and big band leader. Ellington wrote over 1,000 compositions...

 in the Caribbean

Caribbean

The Caribbean is a crescent-shaped group of islands more than 2,000 miles long separating the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea, to the west and south, from the Atlantic Ocean, to the east and north...

. Benjamin Matthews, Sister Mary Elise S.B.S. and Wayne Sanders founded Opera Ebony in 1973. It has served as a professional platform for thousands of American artists, administrators and technical staff helping them to refine their talent and perfect their opera

Opera

Opera is an art form in which singers and musicians perform a dramatic work combining text and musical score, usually in a theatrical setting. Opera incorporates many of the elements of spoken theatre, such as acting, scenery, and costumes and sometimes includes dance...

 craft. In New York City

New York City

New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...

, Opera Ebony has performed at Lincoln Center, Carnegie Hall

Carnegie Hall

Carnegie Hall is a concert venue in Midtown Manhattan in New York City, United States, located at 881 Seventh Avenue, occupying the east stretch of Seventh Avenue between West 56th Street and West 57th Street, two blocks south of Central Park....

, the Brooklyn Academy of Music

Brooklyn Academy of Music

Brooklyn Academy of Music is a major performing arts venue in Brooklyn, a borough of New York City, United States, known as a center for progressive and avant garde performance....

, The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Metropolitan Museum of Art is a renowned art museum in New York City. Its permanent collection contains more than two million works, divided into nineteen curatorial departments. The main building, located on the eastern edge of Central Park along Manhattan's Museum Mile, is one of the...

, The World Trade Center

World Trade Center

The original World Trade Center was a complex with seven buildings featuring landmark twin towers in Lower Manhattan, New York City, United States. The complex opened on April 4, 1973, and was destroyed in 2001 during the September 11 attacks. The site is currently being rebuilt with five new...

, The Beacon Theatre, Langston Hughes Theater (Schomburg Center for Research and Black Culture) and the Manhattan Center. Additionally, for ten years the company presented grand opera at Philadelphia's Academy of Music. Since 1988, Opera Ebony's repertoire has found Brazil, Russia, Estonia, Sweden, Finland, Iceland, Canada, Switzerland and Martinique. The company has also partnered with several major international orchestras, opera companies and music festivals including the Icelandic Symphony Orchestra

Icelandic Symphony Orchestra

Sinfóníuhljómsveit Íslands is an orchestra based in Reykjavík, Iceland. The ISO is an autonomous public institution under the auspices of the Icelandic Ministry of Education...

, the Finnish National Opera

Finnish National Opera

The Finnish National Opera in Helsinki is the leading opera company in Finland. Its home base is the Opera House on Töölönlahti bay in Töölö which opened in 1993, and is state-owned through Senate Properties...

, the Estonia Philharmonic and the Savolinna Music Festival.

In 1998, Opera Ebony was selected as the only American opera company to perform for the opening of the Novaya Opera House in Moscow, Russia. During the winter of 2000, members of Opera Ebony appeared in performance and engaging conversation on the PBS GREAT PERFORMANCES series - Aida's Brothers and Sisters: Black voices in Opera. For Black History Month 2001, the company joined with the Metropolitan Museum of Art to present the premiere workshop performance of Harriet Tubman, a new opera / musical theater work by acclaimed American composer, Leo Edwards.

Notable world premieres and commissioned works include Frederick Douglass

Frederick Douglass

Frederick Douglass was an American social reformer, orator, writer and statesman. After escaping from slavery, he became a leader of the abolitionist movement, gaining note for his dazzling oratory and incisive antislavery writing...

 (Dorothy Rudd Moore

Dorothy Rudd Moore

-Life:Dorothy Rudd was born in New Castle, Delaware, and took piano lessons as a child. She graduated from Howard University in 1963 where she studied with Mark Fax, and continued her studies with Nadia Boulanger in Paris in 1963 and Chou Wen-Chung in New York in 1965.Rudd worked as a private music...

, 1985); Sojourner Truth

Sojourner Truth

Sojourner Truth was the self-given name, from 1843 onward, of Isabella Baumfree, an African-American abolitionist and women's rights activist. Truth was born into slavery in Swartekill, New York, but escaped with her infant daughter to freedom in 1826. After going to court to recover her son, she...

 (Valerie Capers

Valerie Capers

Valerie Capers is an American jazz pianist and composer, born in New York City. She was the first blind graduate of the Juilliard School.-Discography:...

, 1986); The Outcast (Noah Ain, 1990); Oh Freedom (Lena McLin and Benjamin Matthews, 1990); Journin' (Benjamin Matthews 1991); and The Meetin' (Pamela Baskin Watson, commissioned by Opera Ebony and the Jerome Foundation, 1998). Current projects include Harriet Tubman

Harriet Tubman

Harriet Tubman Harriet Tubman Harriet Tubman (born Araminta Harriet Ross; (1820 – 1913) was an African-American abolitionist, humanitarian, and Union spy during the American Civil War. After escaping from slavery, into which she was born, she made thirteen missions to rescue more than 70 slaves...

by Leo Edwards (commissioned by Opera Ebony and the Linda Gale Sampson Charitable Trust) and the remounting of The Meetin' for touring throughout North America.

Opera Ebony is the longest surviving African-American opera company in American history.