Todd Duncan

Todd Duncan was an American baritone who had taught at Howard University for five years and sung almost nothing on stage when Gershwin chose him to create Porgy in 1935. He sang it some eighteen hundred times. In 1936 he and Anne Brown led the cast in refusing to play Washington's segregated National Theatre, and the house gave way, admitting its first mixed audience. In 1945 he became the first Black member of New York City Opera, appearing as Tonio, and in 1949 he created Stephen Kumalo in Weill's Lost in the Stars.