AN AMERICAN MUSICIAN
The drama and spectacle of grand opera - by Gounod, Meyerbeer, Donizetti, later by Verdi and Wagner - took over the stages of Paris, London, and Milan from the 1820s through the 1890s. Cities around the world vied to form their own opera companies, while performers became international stars and toured the world. Pierre Michot, Jenny Lind, Victor Maurel, and Nellie Melba were among the best known, while Verdi called the "stupendous artist" Adelina Patti (1843-1919) the very finest.
Matilda "Sissy" Joyner was born to AME minister and former slave Jeremiah and his wife, choir-singer Henrietta, in 1869. Seven years later, the family moved to Providence RI, where Sissy began voice-training at the Providence Academy of Music. At 18 - now married to hotel bellman David R. Jones - she joined established singer Flora Batson at the New England Conservatory in Boston to develop her operatic repertoire.
In 1887 Matilda (using the name "Sissieretta Jones") appeared at a Parnell Defense benefit at Boston's Music Hall, and a few months later in New York at Steinway Hall and the Wallack theatre. At the latter she was introducer to the manager of Madame Patti, who encouraged her to join a West Indies tour by the Fisk Jubilee singers. Her individual success on this tour led to an appearance at Madison Square Garden and further touring engagements, where she was almost always billed as a top act. Her coloratura voice was so notable that a reporter dubbed her the "Black Patti," a description thereafter used (to her own chagrin) by her promoters.
Over a 10-year period, Jones performed several times at the White House for Presidents Harrison, Cleveland, McKinley, and Roosevelt (being the first black performer to enter the building through the front door), for the British royal family, at Worlds' Fairs in Pittsburgh and Chicago. She toured the Americas, Europe, Africa, Australia, and India. Antonin Dvorak asked her to perform several pieces, and she was invited to perform a lead role for New York's Metropolitan Opera - that invitation rescinded when board members objected to her race.
In 1896, Jones returned to Providence to live with her sick mother. She was frustrated by limited US access to major performance venues, as she was used to around the world - limits imposed by white racism. Her managers Rudolph Voelckel and James Nolan proposed a touring company (which they would own) featuring her, with collaborators including vaudeville composer Bob Cole, performers Sam Lucas and Ernest Hogan, and opera singers.   Volckel promised a forty-week season, guaranteed her the use of a Pullman car, annual income of twenty thousand (more than $750,000 today) for the use of her name, and to devote the final section of each show to her performance of opera and operetta excerpts.
The "Black Patti Troubadors" (later the Black Patti Musical Comedy Company) toured for eighteen years, offering (both black and white) audiences a musical skit, followed by a a collection of vaudeville acts, and ending with Jones. Around 1900, Voelckel hired writers to organize the show around a story-line, adding costumes and scenery to Sissieretta's numbers and incorporating them into the plot. After the 1913 season, Jones' health caused her to cancel most of her appearances. Without her, the company was no longer viable and disbanded.
In 1915, Jones appeared for two solo engagements (Chicago and Harlem), then retired completely at age 46. She had divorced her husband in 1899 for gambling and financial abuse. She owned her home and rental real-estate in Providence, and possessed a collection of valuables - by selling these, she supported herself and her mother until she died of cancer in 1933. Neighbor (and NAACP chapter-president) William Freeman helped her financially in her last years, and was her executor. She is buried in Grace Church Cemetery in Providence.
“I love to sing; singing is to me what sunshine is to the flowers. The flowers absorb the sunshine because it is their nature. I give out melody because God filled my soul with it.”
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