As a young adult, she travelled to Europe to get classical voice training and thereby put the finishing touches on her musical education. She was able to work with significant composers, performers, and conductors. It was also easier in Europe for her, as a Black woman, to have access to high-level specialists in the field of vocal music.
Anderson was involved with music at an advanced degree, as historian Kira Thurman writes:
Anderson spent much of the 1930s living in German-speaking Europe, where she studied and performed the music of German composers such as Franz Schubert, Johannes Brahms, and Hugo Wolf.
In 1957, President Eisenhower invited her to sing at his second inauguration. It was the first time an African American had performed at a presidential inauguration. Eisenhower invited Marian Anderson to sing at the White House on several different occasions.
In that same year, Eisenhower appointed her to be goodwill ambassador for the United States; in that capacity, she toured a number of countries. Eisenhower then appointed her to be a delegate to the United Nations Human Rights Committee.
The next year, in 1958 Eisenhower named Marian Anderson to be a full delegate to the United Nations.
Although known as an American artist, Marian Anderson’s career began in Europe, as Kira Thurman notes:
She had actually become an international sensation much earlier: in 1935 at the Salzburg Festival in Austria. There, the conductor Arturo Toscanini told Anderson that she had a voice “heard once every hundred years.”
In 1986, President Ronald Reagan invited Marian Anderson to the White House, where he awarded her the National Medal of Arts.
