Peggy Russell was born in Catawba County, North Carolina to her late parents Sue Cordell Taylor, and William Glenn Taylor. She graduated from the Newton-Conover city schools, and received a Bachelor’s Degree in Music from Salem College. She pursued further voice study in New York City, and earned a Master’s Degree in Education from Columbia University. She began her performance career at Radio City Music Hall in New York.
Returning to North Carolina, she settled in Greensboro, where she met and married her husband of sixty-six years, John B. Russell. Peggy was a devoted wife and mother, who balanced dedication to her family with a career in performance, teaching, and arts management. During the 1950s, she began performing on radio and television, and singing leading roles in opera productions, including Violetta in La Traviata with the Piedmont Opera Company, Marguerite in the Brevard Music Center’s production of Faust, and the area premiere of Gian Carlo Menottii’s The Telephone.
During the nineteen-sixties, she opened a private voice studio, helping to launch the careers of young singers, including three of her students who sang in the Metropolitan Opera in New York City. Later, she taught and performed in the Voice Department at UNC-Chapel Hill, where she continued coaching young professionals and performing the concert repertoire of her later career. For a number of years, she served as southeastern governor of the National Association of Teachers of Singing, where she mentored teachers in the field.
In the Greensboro music community, she served as an officer of the Euterpe Club, and first President of the Eastern Music Festival Auxiliary. She and her husband John founded the Greensboro Friends of Music in 1968, one of the first integrated professional arts organizations in the South.
During the 1970s, she and her husband founded and ran the Young Artists Opera Theater, a ground-breaking ensemble company for young singers to perform bel canto opera roles. They operated the company for ten years, drawing talent from across the country to sing in Greensboro.
Peggy is preceded in death by her parents, and by her sister Bunny Taylor Clark, of Birmingham, Alabama. She is survived by her husband John, of the home, and her son, John Spotswood Russell of Raleigh, and his wife Kelley Dixon Russell, and her daughter, Susan Bryce Russell, and wife Elizabeth Ann Nackley, of State College, Pennsylvania.
She is survived also by six grandchildren and step-grandchildren: Caroline Spotswood Russell Howe, and her husband Justin Howe of Charlotte; Margaret Taylor Russell of Pompano Beach, Florida; Catherine Brooks Russell of Charlotte; Roddy Jane Moye of Raleigh; Ross Fields Moye of Charlotte; and Elizabeth Anne Moye of Raleigh, and by her great-grandson George Spotswood Russell Howe of Charlotte.
A service of celebration of the life of Peggy Russell will be held at First Presbyterian Church in Greensboro, where she and her husband were long-time members, at 11:00 am on Saturday, October 6. In lieu of flowers, memorials may be made to the opera program of the School of Music at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, or to the charity of one’s choice. Messages of condolence are welcome in care of www.haneslineberryfuneralhomes.com.
