65 Facts About Leontyne Price

Mary Violet Leontyne Price is an American spinto soprano who was the first African-American soprano to receive international acclaim.

Leontyne Price regularly appeared at the world's major opera houses, including the Royal Opera House, San Francisco Opera, Lyric Opera of Chicago, and La Scala; at La Scala, she was the first African American to sing a leading role.

Leontyne Price was particularly renowned for her performances of the title role in Giuseppe Verdi's Aida.

Leontyne Price's 1955 televised performance of Puccini's Tosca, plus appearances at the San Francisco Opera as Poulenc's Dialogues des Carmelites and Aida, brought her to international attention.

Leontyne Price went on to sing at many of the world's major opera houses with Aida, before her successful debut at the Metropolitan Opera in 1961, as Leonora in Verdi's Il trovatore.

Leontyne Price made her farewell opera performance at the Met in 1985 in Aida.

Leontyne Price was noted for her roles in operas by Mozart and Puccini, as well as playing Cleopatra in Handel's Giulio Cesare and Poppea in Monteverdi's L'incoronazione di Poppea.

Mary Violet Leontyne Price was born in Laurel, Mississippi, on February 10,1927.

Leontyne Price's father, James Anthony, worked as a carpenter and her mother, Katherine Baker Price, was a midwife.

Leontyne Price's brother and only sibling, George, was born two years later.

Leontyne Price showed a natural affinity for music at an early age and began piano lessons at the age of three and a half with the local pianist Hattie McInnis.

Meanwhile, at the age of eight, she had begun visiting the home of Alexander and Elizabeth Chisholm, a wealthy white family for whom Leontyne Price's aunt worked as a laundress.

Leontyne Price earned extra money by singing for funerals and civic functions.

Leontyne Price began her study in music education at Central State University, a historically Black school in Wilberforce, Ohio.

Leontyne Price participated in master classes, including one in 1948 with the renowned bass Paul Robeson at Antioch College.

Leontyne Price entered the studio of Florence Page Kimball in the fall of 1948.

In fall 1950, Leontyne Price joined Juilliard's Opera Workshop and sang small roles in workshop performances of Mozart's Magic Flute and Puccini's Gianni Schicchi.

In early 1952, Leontyne Price performed as Mistress Ford in a Juilliard production of Verdi's Falstaff.

Leontyne Price was thus the first African American to sing with and for the Met, if not at the Met as a member of the company.

In November 1954, Leontyne Price made her formal recital debut at New York's Town Hall.

In January 1955, Leontyne Price sang the title role in Puccini's Tosca, the first appearance by an African American in a leading role in televised opera.

Leontyne Price's appearance had not been widely advertised by NBC, which had a policy of "integration without identification", and the Jackson, Mississippi, NBC affiliate carried the broadcast signal to her home town of Laurel.

In March 1955, Leontyne Price was taken by her agent to audition at Carnegie Hall for the Austrian conductor Herbert von Karajan, who was touring with the Berlin Philharmonic.

The next fall, Leontyne Price appeared as Leonora in Verdi's Il trovatore in San Francisco, with the Swedish tenor Jussi Bjorling.

Leontyne Price gave a BBC television recital of American songs with Gerald Moore, and a concert of operatic scenes by Richard Strauss for BBC Radio, conducted by Adler.

That summer, Leontyne Price made her debut at the Salzburg Festival in Beethoven's Missa solemnis, conducted by Karajan; recorded a second full opera, Il trovatore, for RCA in Rome; then returned to Verona to sing Il trovatore with tenor Franco Corelli.

That fall, Leontyne Price made her Chicago Lyric Opera debut as Liu in Puccini's Turandot with Birgit Nilsson in the title role, and sang Massenet's Thais.

Leontyne Price's Liu was well received while her Thais was considered stiff and mannered.

Leontyne Price was the first African American to sing a prima donna role in Italy's greatest opera house.

Leontyne Price then returned to Vienna to appear first as Cio-Cio-San in Puccini's Madama Butterfly.

Leontyne Price turned him down on the advice of Adler and others, who argued that she should wait until she had more repertoire under her belt and could arrive as a true prima donna.

Leontyne Price even took the trills as written, and nothing in the part as Verdi wrote it gave her the least bit of trouble.

Leontyne Price was a box-office hit, and the first to be asked to sing a season opening night, a true sign of prima donna status.

The newspapers said that Leontyne Price was suffering a viral infection, but stress and the unsuitable weight of the role of Minnie played their parts.

However, Leontyne Price later said she was suffering from nervous exhaustion, having performed a schedule of history making intensity, without a vacation for several years.

Leontyne Price gave the first performance by an African American to sing a leading role with the company in the South, singing Fanciulla in Dallas.

Leontyne Price performed a famous Il trovatore in Salzburg in 1962, and Tosca, Donna Anna and Aida, in Vienna, most often with Karajan.

Leontyne Price was the soprano soloist in many of Karajan's performances of Verdi's Requiem.

The composer had written the role of Cleopatra especially for Leontyne Price, often visiting her at home to run through new pages of the score.

In reviews of the premiere, Leontyne Price's singing was highly praised.

The chaotic final rehearsals, along with scenes of Leontyne Price's beautiful singing, were captured by cinema verite director Robert Drew in a documentary on The Bell Telephone Hour, The New Met: Countdown to Curtain.

Leontyne Price later said the experience soured her feelings toward the Met.

Leontyne Price said she was tired, stressed by racial tensions in the US, and frustrated with the number and quality of the new productions she'd been given at the Met.

Leontyne Price's recitals and concerts were highly successful, and, for the next two decades, she was a mainstay in the major orchestral and concert series in the major American cities and universities.

Leontyne Price realized she needed to maintain some visibility in opera as well, and she returned to the Met and the San Francisco Opera, her favorite house, for short runs of three to five performances, sometimes a year or more apart.

Leontyne Price appeared even more rarely in opera in Europe.

That fall, Leontyne Price sang her her first Strauss heroine: Ariadne in Ariadne auf Naxos The premiere in San Francisco was considered a great success.

On July 4,1983, she sang with the National Philharmonic on the Capitol Mall, and in fall 1986, Leontyne Price sang the national anthem backed by the Los Angeles Philharmonic on Orange County Performing Arts Center's opening.

Leontyne Price's voice proved resilient as she entered her 50s.

Herbert Caen of the San Francisco Chronicle reported that Leontyne Price had insisted on being paid $1 more than the tenor.

In 1982, Leontyne Price returned to the Met as Leonora in Il trovatore, a role she hadn't sung in the house since 1969.

Leontyne Price sang a televised concert of duets and arias with Marilyn Horne and conductor James Levine, later released on record by RCA.

In 21 seasons with the Met, Leontyne Price gave 201 performances, in 16 roles, in the house and on tour.

Leontyne Price liked to end her encores with "This Little Light of Mine", which she said was her mother's favorite spiritual.

Over time, Leontyne Price's voice became darker and heavier, but the upper register held up extraordinarily well and her conviction and sheer delight in singing always spilled over the footlights.

Leontyne Price avoided the term African American, preferring to call herself an American, even a "chauvinistic American".

On September 30,2001, at the age of 74, Leontyne Price came out of retirement to sing in a memorial concert at Avery Fisher Hall for the victims of the September 11 attacks.

Leontyne Price sang a cappella the spiritual "This Little Light of Mine" and then "God Bless America", ending this with a bright, easy high B-flat.

In 2017, the age of 90, Leontyne Price appeared in Susan Froemke's The Opera House, a documentary about the opening of the new Metropolitan Opera House in Lincoln Center in 1966.

In 2019, Leontyne Price was awarded an honorary doctorate degree from Boston Conservatory at Berklee.

Leontyne Price recorded two albums of Richard Strauss arias, an album of French and German art songs, a Schumann song album, two albums of spirituals, a single crossover disc, Right as the Rain, with Andre Previn, and an album of patriotic songs, God Bless America.

Leontyne Price should be an inspiration for every musician, Black or White.

Karajan took her to task for these during rehearsals for the 1977 Il trovatore, as Leontyne Price herself related in an interview in Diva, by Helena Matheopoulos.

Leontyne Price's acting, too, drew different responses over a long career.

In March 2007, on BBC Music Magazines list of the "20 All-time Best Sopranos" based on a poll of 21 British music critics and BBC presenters, Leontyne Price was ranked fourth, after Maria Callas, Joan Sutherland, and Victoria de los Angeles.