Leontyne Price: America's greatest soprano turns 90

[BeyondGeography]

Leontyne Price, born Mary Violet Leontyne Price on February 10, 1927 in Laurel, Mississippi is an operatic soprano, who made her début at the Metropolitan Opera House in New York on January 27, 1961, following in the footsteps of Marian Anderson, who was the first black woman to sing at the Met on January 7, 1955.

Price was the first black woman to become a season’s leading artist with the Metropolitan Opera. In 1959, after hearing her in Giuseppe Verdi’s Il Trovatore Met General Manager Rudolf Bing invited her to join the Met company in the 1960–61 season. Her 1961 Met début in Il Trovatore received a 42 minute standing ovation; Italian tenor Franco Corelli also made his Met début alongside Price that evening. On September 16, 1966, she was La Prima Donna for the newly constructed Metropolitan Opera House, making her the first women, black or white, to open the new Met at Lincoln Center. She played the role of “Cleopatra” in Samuel Barber’s Antony and Cleopatra; Puerto Rican bass-baritone Justino Díaz played “Antony.”

A graduate of New York’s Juilliard School, her professional career had begun in 1952 in London, and in 1953 on Broadway where she was praised for her role as “Bess” in the American opera Porgy and Bess by George and Ira Gershwin; she starred with her then husband bass-baritone William Warfield.

Price was the first black woman to sing opera on television in the United States of America; it aired on NBC-TV Opera Theatre; she was paired with Italian-American tenor David Poleri in Giacomo Puccini’s Tosca on January 23, 1955, it was interracial, enraging many NBC-TV Southern state affiliates who refused to air the opera, cancelling Southern broadcasts; it was followed by the role of “Pamina” in Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte (The Magic Flute/La Flauta Magica) with William Lewis, also interracial, on January 15, 1956. She returned for two more NBC Opera broadcasts as “Madame Lidoine” in Poulenc’s Dialogues of the Carmelites in 1957 and “Donna Anna” in Mozart’s Don Giovanni in 1960.

Throughout her career she refused to sing for segregated audiences in the South. On May 30, 1957 she was televised in a 35-minute live recital documentary, as herself, directly from Sydney Town Hall in Australia. She made numerous television appearances in programs such as What’s My Line?, The Ed Sullivan Show, and The Bell Telephone Hour. Price is world renowned soprano who sang in every single major opera house in the world; from Milan, Italy’s Teatro alla Scala to London’s Royal Opera House, Covent Garden; her countless festivals include Salzburg. Price sang for several US Presidents including President Dwight D. Eisenhower, the inauguration of Lyndon B. Johnson on January 20, 1965, LBJ’s funeral, President Jimmy Carter at the White House on October 8, 1978, and others.

After Price sang 201 performances with the Met, on January 3, 1985, the Metropolitan Opera billed the program as Leontyne Price’s Farewell to Opera in Giuseppe Verdi’s Aida. It was her final professional opera performance; appropriately sung at the Met. In 2007, PBS viewers voted her farewell performance of the aria, “O patria mia”, as the No. 1 “Great Moment” from the Live from the Met telecasts. The aria ends with a graceful and emotional ovation. (See clip above.)

After 1985, she continued to give recitals, performances, and master classes. Leontyne Price has received countless awards and accolades including The Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1964; the NAACP’s Spingarn Medal in 1965; won two Emmy Awards out of her three nominations; the Kennedy Center Honors in 1980; the National Medal of Arts in 1985; Oprah Legend in 2005; received Ordre des Arts et des Lettres (French Order of Arts and Letters), received Ordine al merito della Repubblica Italiana (The Order of Merit of the Italian Republic), and on October 31, 2008, she was one of the recipients of the first Opera Honors given by the National Endowment for the Arts. She has earned 19 Grammy Awards, the most Grammy Awards by a Classical Music singer this includes a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 1989. Leontyne Price is undeniably the most accomplished black woman in opera history, and known as “The Voice of the Century.”

https://undertheduvetproductions.wordpress.com/2017/02/03/leontyne-price-operas-greatest-soprano-turns-90-by-photojournalist-lisa-pacino/

[Princess Turandot]

1. Here's three of the referenced performances...

An aria from that 1955 NBC Opera Theatre production of Tosca
Vissi d'arte (in English! :0 )

LBJ's Funeral Service (1973), beginning at 23:30: Take my hand, precious Lord; Onward Christian Soldiers

And Vissi d'arte in 1978, at the White House, by invitation of President Carter:

Opera is my favorite of the performing arts, but Ms. Price had already retired from the Met when my interest began, so unfortunately, I never saw her in performance there.

[longship]

2. She is quite wonderful!

The two Toscas are different. There seems to be a bit more Callas in the Carter White House performance.

Tosca is one of my recommended first operas for those uninitiated to the genre (another is Le Nozze di Figaro). Tosca is great stage craft, wonderful music (thank you Puccini!), plus it has the plot advantage that you know the opera is over when the last of the principles is dead.

This is Tosca's kiss! Poor Scarpia doesn't make through the second act. He dies with a butter knife plunged through his chest. Thanks to Tosca.

[BeyondGeography]

3. Me neither

I do have her 1966 recording of Aida at the Met with the great Carlo Bergonzi as Radames. Price is at the top of her game throughout and repeatedly brings the down the house. There's nothing like it when an opera audience and a performer understand something that it's one of those nights and something artistically unique is happening. It's such a thrill.

[oasis]

4. Leontyne Price, happy birthday to ya!