Estelle Pinckney Clough

Clough, a coloratura soprano,^[1] was one of several African-American sopranos who sang the title role in Verdi's Aida around the turn into the twentieth century, along with Caterina Jarboro and Florence Cole Talbert.^[2][3] Clough was Aida when the opera was performed by the Theodore Drury Opera Company in New York in 1903 and 1906.^[4][5][6] She was a soloist in Samuel Coleridge-Taylor's Hiawatha in Washington, D.C. in 1904,^[7] sharing the bill with Harry Burleigh.^[8] A 1905 review praised her "wonderful timbre and flexibility of her well-cultured voice," adding that "she was loudly encored, and in her response with more familiar songs the mellow sweetness of her voice was evidenced."^[9] In 1906, she was soloist at the first concert of the Coleridge-Taylor Singing Union in New Haven,^[10] and sang at a fundraiser for the Colored Men's Branch of the YMCA.^[11]

In 1908, Clough sang at a memorial service for inventor Joseph Lee, with her daughter as her accompanist.^[12] In 1911, she and her daughter were on the program at a commemoration of the centenary of abolitionist Charles Sumner at Faneuil Hall.^[13] In 1916, she sang at a tribute to newspaper editor William Monroe Trotter.^[14] In 1918, she sang at a benefit concert to raise funds for "necessary comforts for the colored soldiers" serving in World War I.^[15]

Clough was also a soloist at church concerts,^[16][17] and taught voice students from her own studio in Worcester.^[18][19]

Pinckney married postal carrier Benjamin H. Clough in 1889; his sister Inez Clough was also a noted performer.^[20] They had a daughter, Harriet, who died from tuberculosis as a young woman in 1913. Clough died in 1929, in her sixties, in Worcester.^[21]