Bend your ear to Saturday, 23 July 1853. On that morning, America's first Black concert vocalist and operatic singer, Elizabeth Taylor Greenfield, performed at Stafford House, home of prominent English Abolitionist the Duchess of Sutherland, during her UK tour. Born into captivity on a plantation in Mississippi and raised free in Philadelphia, Taylor Greenfield's voice sounded out the fever pitch of America's conflict over slavery. A multioctave singer, she smashed boundaries for race and gender as a Black woman who sang “white” vocal repertoire across registers heard as both female and male. Writing on an early public performance in 1851, one newspaper reviewer summed up the revolutionary threat of Taylor Greenfield's voice by stating “we can assure the public that the Union is in no degree periled by it,” meaning of course, that the Union was. Whether received by pro- or antislavery audiences, Taylor Greenfield's voice was understood to peal out Black emancipation. In his 1855 review of Taylor Greenfield's New York Tabernacle performance, James McCune Smith went as far to compare Taylor Greenfield's voice to the firearms employed by escaped slaves defending their freedom against the Fugitive Slave Act.

请倾听 1853 年 7 月 23 日星期六。那天早上，美国第一位黑人音乐会歌手和歌剧歌手伊丽莎白·泰勒·格林菲尔德 (Elizabeth Taylor Greenfield) 在英国著名废奴主义者萨瑟兰公爵夫人 (Duchess of Sutherland) 的英国巡演期间在斯塔福德宫 (Stafford House) 表演。泰勒·格林菲尔德（Taylor Greenfield）出生于密西西比州的一个种植园，在费城自由长大，他的声音代表了美国奴隶制冲突的激烈程度。作为一名多八度歌手，她打破了种族和性别的界限，成为一名黑人女性，在女性和男性的音域中演唱“白人”声乐曲目。一位报纸评论家在 1851 年早期的公开表演中写道，他总结了泰勒·格林菲尔德声音的革命威胁，他说“我们可以向公众保证，联邦绝不会因此受到威胁”，当然，意思是，是。无论是支持奴隶制还是反对奴隶制的观众，泰勒·格林菲尔德的声音都被认为是在大声疾呼黑人解放。詹姆斯·麦库恩·史密斯 (James McCune Smith) 在 1855 年对泰勒·格林菲尔德 (Taylor Greenfield) 在纽约会幕表演的评论中，甚至将泰勒·格林菲尔德 (Taylor Greenfield) 的声音与逃亡奴隶使用的枪支进行比较，以捍卫自己的自由，反对《逃亡奴隶法》。