Opera Singer. A coloratura soprano, she shall be remembered as one of the first black artists to achieve major operatic stardom. The child of a distinguished family, she was raised in Atlanta, studied piano from around age seven, and learned to sing in church. Mattiwilda began formal vocal study while a student at Atlanta's Spelman College and, according to legend, was picked by Dr. Martin Luther King, Sr. as a bride for his son Martin Luther King, Jr., though the match-up did not work out. She went on to New York City and to Tanglewood for further training, then travelled to Paris on a Marian Anderson Scholarship, though during her time in New York she had earned a master's degree in Spanish from Columbia University, an education she pursued in order to have a back-up if musical success eluded her. Victory at the 1951 Geneva International Music Competition paved the way to opera; she sang Zerbinetta from Richard Strauss' "Ariadne auf Naxos" at Glyndebourne, was the Woodbird in Wagner's "Siegfried" at Covent Garden, and became the first black to appear at La Scala Milano prior to her 1955 American debut with the San Francisco Opera as Queen Shemakha from Rimsky-Korsakov's "Le Coq d'Or'. Mattiwilda bowed at the Metropolitan Opera on November 9, 1956 as the doomed Gilda of Verdi's "Rigoletto" with the legendary Leonard Warren as her Jester father, then remained with the company thru 1964, her other roles there being Zerlina in Mozart's "Don Giovanni", Oscar from Verdi's "Un Ballo en Maschera", and the title lead of Donizetti's "Lucia di Lammermoor". A respected recitalist for a number of years, she retired in 1974 and became the first black faculty member at the University of Texas; later accepting a professorship at Howard University, she resided in Northern Virginia, then in 2013 moved to an Atlanta nursing facility. At her death from the effects of advanced age much of her rather small recorded legacy was preserved on CD.