Ruby Elzy

Ruby Elzy was an American soprano who went from Rust College to Ohio State and then to Juilliard, where she studied with Lucia Dunham. She played Dolly in the 1933 film of The Emperor Jones, opposite Paul Robeson, created Serena in Porgy and Bess two years later, and sang that part more than eight hundred times. She sang at the Gershwin memorial concert at the Hollywood Bowl in 1937 and at the White House later the same year. She was preparing her first Aida when she died at thirty-five, a week after her last Serena, following surgery.