The AOP-NYU/Tisch’s Opera Lab presents: The Transit Operas, a collection of new 15 minute operas inspired by the NY Transit Museum.

Allie Lewis (librettist) and Séan Stone (composer) will have their opera, Miss Subway, performed.

About Miss Subway:

In 1939, Miss America winner Patricia Mary Donnelly received a $2000 cash prize from a hat company for product endorsement.

Brenda Grant (a nanny and woman of color in her 20s), Carrie French (a secretary in her 30s), and Rosalind Warner (a maid in her 50s) commute to their jobs together every day. Today, inspired by Patricia Donnelly’s hat deal,  Brenda imagines what her version of a subway-based beauty pageant could be, and encourages her friends to share in this dream. 

In reality, the Miss Subways contest was created in 1941 by a Mr. Jack Powers (read: a white man) for the purposes of encouraging increased eye traffic to the consumer ads on subway walls, and to launch his own modeling agency. Though the contest wasn’t truly created for the benefit of the women it pictured, it is recognized as one of the first integrated beauty pageants in the world and had a positive impact on many of its contestants.

This piece is inspired by and dedicated to three leading ladies who were the first Black women to win their respective beauty contests: 

Thelma Porter (Miss Subways, 1948) 

Audrey Smaltz (Miss Transit Queen, 1954) 

Vanessa Williams (Miss New York and Miss America, 1983)