Virginia Lewis might well have showed stage fright, but she didn't. When she stepped on the stage at Philadelphia's Robin Hood Dell one night last summer, before the Philadelphia Orchestra and Conductor Alexander Smallens, she had never sung with an orchestra. She had not been rehearsed for this concert. She had just been handed an unfamiliar arrangement of two songs from George Gershwin's Porgy and Bess. Someone had stepped on her gown and ripped it. But the chunky, dignified, dark brown Negro soprano let loose a voice for which everyone, including Conductor Smallens,...
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