Singing the role of Isabella Stewart Gardner, the patron of painter John Singer Sargent (1856-1925) in this new opera, American Apollo, by Damien Geter and Lila Palmer.

This opera is about Thomas McKeller (1890-1962) and his relationship with John Singer Sargent. McKeller was discovered to have been the African American model for painter John Singer Sargent. The two men struck up a chance acquaintance while McKeller was working as an elevator operator in a hotel Sargent was staying in which led to Sargent’s hiring of McKeller, who became the artist’s principal model in this country. Curiously, Sargent used him as a body model which he ‘lightened’ for white gods and allegories, notably in murals at Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts, and Harvard University.