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The [[soprano]] '''Mary Violet Leontyne Price''' (born [[February 10]], [[1927]]) is an [[African American]] [[opera]] singer. She was best known for her [[Giuseppe Verdi|Verdi]] roles, above all [[Aida]], a role that she is often said to have "owned" for almost 30 years. Her rise to international fame was one of several breakthroughs by African Americans in the 1960s, and indeed represented a new high point for American classical singing on the world's stages. |
The [[soprano]] '''Mary Violet Leontyne Price''' (born [[February 10]], [[1927]]) is an [[African American]] [[opera]] singer. She was best known for her [[Giuseppe Verdi|Verdi]] roles, above all [[Aida]], a role that she is often said to have "owned" for almost 30 years. Her rise to international fame was one of several breakthroughs by African Americans in the 1960s, and indeed represented a new high point for American classical singing on the world's stages. |
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Price was born in a segregated black neighborhood of [[Laurel, Mississippi]]. Her father worked in a lumber mill and her mother was a midwife with a rich singing voice. Leontyne's talent |
Price was born in a segregated black neighborhood of [[Laurel, Mississippi]]. Her father worked in a lumber mill and her mother was a midwife with a rich singing voice. They noticed Leontyne's talent early and traded in the family phonograph for a small piano for her to play. The girl's studies were also encouraged by an affluent white family in Laurel, the Chisholms, who often asked her to sing at family events. Aiming for a teaching career, she enrolled in the music education program at [[Central State University]], [[Wilberforce, Ohio]], on a scholarship, but found herself drawn to singing, and completed her studies in voice. With the help of the great bass [[Paul Robeson]] and the Chisholms, she obtained a scholarship to study at the [[Juilliard School]] in New York City, where she became a prized pupil of Florence Page Kimball. |
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Price's first opera performance was as Mistress Quickly in a Juilliard production of Verdi's ''Falstaff''. Composer [[Virgil Thomson]], who heard that performance, hired her immediately to sing in a revival of his opera, ''Four Saints in Three Acts''. Her first national acclaim came as Bess in a successful 1954 Broadway and international revival of [[George Gershwin]]'s ''[[Porgy and Bess]]''. After the run, Price married her Porgy, [[William Warfield]], who was also an acclaimed baritone in oratorio and ''lieder.'' (They were divorced in 1972.) |
Price's first opera performance was as Mistress Quickly in a Juilliard production of Verdi's ''Falstaff''. Composer [[Virgil Thomson]], who heard that performance, hired her immediately to sing in a revival of his opera, ''Four Saints in Three Acts''. Her first national acclaim came as Bess in a successful 1954 Broadway and international revival of [[George Gershwin]]'s ''[[Porgy and Bess]]''. After the run, Price married her Porgy, [[William Warfield]], who was also an acclaimed baritone in oratorio and ''lieder.'' (They were divorced in 1972.) |
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Revision as of 23:29, 25 September 2005
The soprano Mary Violet Leontyne Price (born February 10, 1927) is an African American opera singer. She was best known for her Verdi roles, above all Aida, a role that she is often said to have "owned" for almost 30 years. Her rise to international fame was one of several breakthroughs by African Americans in the 1960s, and indeed represented a new high point for American classical singing on the world's stages.
Price was born in a segregated black neighborhood of Laurel, Mississippi. Her father worked in a lumber mill and her mother was a midwife with a rich singing voice. They noticed Leontyne's talent early and traded in the family phonograph for a small piano for her to play. The girl's studies were also encouraged by an affluent white family in Laurel, the Chisholms, who often asked her to sing at family events. Aiming for a teaching career, she enrolled in the music education program at Central State University, Wilberforce, Ohio, on a scholarship, but found herself drawn to singing, and completed her studies in voice. With the help of the great bass Paul Robeson and the Chisholms, she obtained a scholarship to study at the Juilliard School in New York City, where she became a prized pupil of Florence Page Kimball.
Price's first opera performance was as Mistress Quickly in a Juilliard production of Verdi's Falstaff. Composer Virgil Thomson, who heard that performance, hired her immediately to sing in a revival of his opera, Four Saints in Three Acts. Her first national acclaim came as Bess in a successful 1954 Broadway and international revival of George Gershwin's Porgy and Bess. After the run, Price married her Porgy, William Warfield, who was also an acclaimed baritone in oratorio and lieder. (They were divorced in 1972.)
In 1955, NBC TV Opera engaged Price to sing Giacomo Puccini's Tosca. The idea of casting a black singer in a white role prompted controversy and some NBC affiliates canceled the broadcast, but the Price's performance was a critical success. (A CD has appeared of that performance, which was sung in English, and reveal a young soprano with a fluttery vibrato, clear diction, and a shining top register.)
Price's professional operatic stage debut came in 1957 at the San Francisco Opera as Madame Lidoine in the U.S. premiere of Poulenc's Dialogues of the Carmelites. In 1958, she was invited by Herbert von Karajan to make her first European operatic appearance, as Aida, at the Vienna State Opera. Price and von Karajan continued to work together, in the opera house (most famously in 1962 Salzburg performances of Verdi's Il Trovatore), concert hall (notably in Verdi's Requiem), and on famous recordings of Tosca, Carmen, and one of the most popular of all holiday albums, "A Christmas Offering."
On July 2, 1958, Price made her debut, as Aida, at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden. Her first appearance at Milan's Teatro alla Scala came two years later, on May 21, 1960, again as Aida. Price was the first black singer to sing a leading role in the historic home of Italian opera.
On January 27, 1961, she crowned this royal progress with her first performances at the Metropolitan Opera as Leonora in Verdi's Il Trovatore. The performance also marked the debut of Italian tenor Franco Corelli, and ended in a 42-minute ovation. In the New York Times, critic Harold Schonberg wrote: "[Price's] voice was dusky and rich in its lower tones, perfectly even in its transitions from one register to another, and flawlessly pure and velvety at the top." Several black artists had sung at the Met after the contralto Marian Anderson broke the race barrier there, at Bing's invitation, on January 7, 1955. Price was the first African-American opera singer to be acclaimed abroad and at home.
In the 1960s and 1970s, Price sang 16 roles at the Met, including Donna Anna in Mozart's Don Giovanni, Tatyana in Tchaikovsky's Eugene Onegin, Cio-Cio-San in Puccini's Madama Butterfly, and Ariadne in Strauss' Ariadne auf Naxos. When the Met's opened its new house at Lincoln Center in 1966, Price sang Cleopatra in the premiere of Antony and Cleopatra by Samuel Barber, who wrote the part to suit Price's voice.
Of all her roles, Price's is best remembered for her Verdi heroines, whose soaring lines and passionate utterances suited her voice and personality-- among them, in addition to Aida, the two Leonoras of Il Trovatore and La Forza del Destino, Elvira in "Ernani," and Amelia in Un Ballo in Maschera. Her operatic farewell came in 1985 in a live "Aida" telecast from the Met. She continued to give recitals with programs that mixed melodies, lieder, Spirituals, an operatic aria or two, and American art songs by Samuel Barber, Ned Rorem and Lee Hoiby (many of them written for her). She gave her final recital, on November 19, 1997 in Chapel Hill, N.C. She continued to give master classes. In 1997, she published a children's book version of "Aida," which became the basis for the hit Broadway musical of the same title by Elton John and Tim Rice, which opened in 2000.
In September 2001, Leontyne Price came out of retirement to sing a spiritual and "God Bless America" in a Carnegie Hall memorial concert for victims of the World Trade Center attacks. She lives in Greenwich Village in New York City.
External links
- Leontyne Price "Voice of the Century" Extensive fan site.
- Profile on Afrovoices.com