Antoinette Garnes
American opera singer
Antoinette Smythe Garnes (about 1887 – July 2, 1938) was an American soprano singer active in the 1920s.
Education
Antoinette Smythe Garnes was born about 1887 in Detroit. She studied at Detroit Central High School, Detroit Conservatory of Music, Howard University, and Chicago Musical College; at the last institution she studied with Edoardo Sacerdote, earned a bachelor of music degree in 1919, and was the college's first black winner of the Alexander Revell diamond medal. She also played violin and piano. She earned a Master of Music degree from the Chicago Musical College in 1920.
Career
In 1923 Garnes was the only African American member of the Chicago Grand Opera Company. She was a member of the Chicago Opera Association. Erma Morris accompanied her for a performance in Detroit. She sang at a meeting of the NAACP in Chicago in 1919. Music critic Agnes Beldon noted Garnes's "sterling vocal ability and fine training".
The public source identifies “Antoinette Garnes” as american opera singer. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Antoinette, Garnes and American.
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The entry’s evidential value lies in the named roles, institutions and publications that can be tested against primary documentation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Mar 24, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q90583331. VIAF identifies the subject as 78560777. The Library of Congress control number is no2007080658. None of the 3 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1887, 1938, 1919 and 1920.
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This entry incorporates text from “Antoinette Garnes” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.