Leontyne Price

At 97 years old, Leontyne Price physical status not available right now. We will update Leontyne Price's height, weight, eye color, hair color, build, and measurements.

Mary Violet Leontyne Price (born February 10, 1927) is an American soprano.

Born and raised in Laurel, Mississippi, she was the first African American to become a leading performer, or prima donna, at the Metropolitan Opera in 1985, one of the first American classical singers to reach international prominence. Time magazine praised her voice as "Rich, supple and shining" as a result of her effortless transition from a smoky mezzo to a pure soprano gold of a perfectly spun high C"A lirico spinto (Italian for "pushed lyric) soprano. She continued to perform in recitals and orchestral concerts until 1997 after her retirement from opera. The Presidential Medal of Freedom (1964), the Kennedy Center Honors (1985), many honorary degrees, and 19 Grammy Awards for operatic and song recitals (1989), more than any other classical singer, are among her many distinctions.

She was one of the first Opera Honors by the National Endowment for the Performing Arts in October 2008.

Leontyne Price was given an honorary doctorate degree from Boston Conservatory at Berklee in 2019.

Source

Life and career

Mary Violet Leontyne Price was born in Laurel, Mississippi, on February 10, 1927. Her father James Anthony was a carpenter, and her mother Katherine Baker Price was a midwife. Both of her parents were children of Methodist ministers; her mother performed as a soloist in the church choir; and her father played a tuba. George, her brother and only sibling, was born two years ago. She demonstrated a natural passion for music at an early age and began piano lessons with Hattie McInnis, the local pianist. She began playing on a toy piano, but by the time she was five years old, her parents traded in the family phonograph for the down payment on an upright piano. During the eighties, Leontyne's aunt worked as a laundress, and she had begun visiting Alexander and Elizabeth Chisholm, a wealthy white family for whom Leontyne's aunt worked as a laundress. Leontyne and George became good friends with Jean and Peggy, the Chisholms' older daughters, and Mrs. Chisholm, who were often invited to perform at house parties. She was on a school trip to see Marian Anderson perform a recital in Jackson at the age of 9. It was her first meaningful exposure to classical music, and she later recalled that "the whole atmosphere of the occasion had a major influence on me, especially the singer's dignity and, of course, her voice." Multiple commentators said that this event ignited Price's desire for a musical career. Price attended Oak Park Vocational High School, where she served as a cheerleader and salutatorian during her teen years. She earned extra money by performing for funerals and civic functions.

At the time, Mississippi was highly segregated and subjected to Jim Crow laws. As such, as a black woman, the only logical career path was as a teacher. She began her studies in music education at Central State University, a historically black school in Wilberforce, Ohio. However, she switched to voice in her third year on the university president's advice and after regular singing in a glee club. She has also taught master classes, including one in 1948 at Antioch College with the renowned bass Paul Robeson. Robeson, who knew she was aiming to enroll at Juilliard, was enthused by Price's voice, and she and the Central State officials collaborated to host a benefit concert to raise money for her tuition. The Chisholms remained supportive of Price, and they gave Juilliard the bulk of the funds needed for Juilliard.

In the fall of 1948, she entered Florence Page Kimball's studio. While attending the Juilliard that year, she lived in the Harlem YWCA, which was safe and inexpensive housing for black women. 72 Larissa Welch performed Salome from the Met's standing-room section and became fascinated by opera in her second year. Price joined Juilliard's Opera Workshop in fall 1950 and appeared in small roles in Mozart's Magic Flute (First Lady) and Puccini's Gianni Schicchi (Aunt Nella). She enrolled in the Berkshire Music Center in Tanglewood's summer 1951 and performed Ariadne in Strauss' Ariadne on Naxos (second cast).

In early 1952, Price appeared in a Juilliard production of Verdi's Falstaff as Mistress Ford. In Three Acts, Virgil Thomson received a performance and cast her in a revival of his all-black opera, Four Saints. The Saints' production in Paris after two weeks on Broadway. In the meantime, Price had agreed to perform Bess in a new production of Gershwin's Porgy and Bess directed by Robert Breen at the Ziegfeld Theatre.

She appeared on the plane from Paris as the inaugural Porgy and Bess performance at the State Fair of Texas on June 9, 1952, receiving rave reviews. The production appeared in Pittsburgh, Chicago, and Washington, D.C., as well as Paris, Berlin, London, and Paris under the auspices of the US State Department.

Price married William Warfield, her Porgy, and a well-known bass-baritone concert pianist on the eve of the European tour. Many in the audience attended the service at the Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem.

Despite several black newspapers' critique of Porgy and Bess' export as presenting a false and demeaning representation of black life, the Breen production demonstrated that Americans could revive a musical masterpiece while acknowledging its outdated stereotypes. Many East Berliners gathered in West Berlin to see the performance.

When Porgy and Bess returned to the United States in 1953, Warfield was unable to plan a packed recital and concert schedule and was dropped from the cast, while Price sang Bess for another year on Broadway and a second tour in the United States. The warfield said the incident put a strain on their young marriages. In 1967, the couple were legally divorced and divorced in 1973. They had no children.

Both Price and Warfield like to pursue careers in opera, but racial stereotypes limited the chances for black singers. Beginning with Camilla Williams and Todd Duncan, the New York City Center Opera under Laszlo Halasz had recruited the first black singers to lead roles in the mid-1940s, beginning with Marcus James and Todd Duncan. Rudolf Bing, the Metropolitan Opera's current general manager, had announced in 1949 that Negro singers would be cast "for the right role."

Price's potential was demonstrated by the Metropolitan Opera by inviting her to perform "Summertime" at a "Met Jamboree" fund-raiser on April 6, 1953, at the Ritz Theater on Broadway. If not attending the Met as a member of the company, Price was then the first African American to perform with and for the Met. Marian Anderson, who sang Ulrica in Verdi's Un ballo in maschera on January 7, 1955, received the award. The audience was captivated by Price and Warfield.

Although waiting for a chance to perform in opera, Price sang duo concerts with Warfield, and after leaving Porgy and Bess, begin a Columbia Artists concert career. She appeared at the Library of Congress in 1953, with composer Samuel Barber at the piano. The program featured the world premiere of Barber's Hermit Songs. Price made her formal recital debut at New York's Town Hall in November 1954.

Through television and the NBC Opera Theatre, with music director Peter Herman Adler, the door to opera was opened. In January 1955, Price appeared in Puccini's Tosca, marking the first appearance by an African American in a leading role in televised opera. Veronica Tyler, the NBC Opera Chorus's other black soprano, had appeared on several seasons.) Pamina in Mozart's The Magic Flute in 1956, as Madame Lidoine in Poulenc's Dialogues of the Carmelites, and Donna Anna in Mozart's Don Giovanni in 1960. Tosca was not controversial. Price's appearance had not been widely promoted 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. However, Jet magazine noted that her first TV broadcast with tenor David Poleri, the Cavaradossi, was broadcast by a network of a mixed race marriage, and that her later NBC Opera broadcasts were boycotted by many NBC affiliates, many in the South, due to her ethnicity.

Price was taken by her agent to audition in Carnegie Hall for the young Austrian conductor Herbert von Karajan, who was touring with the Berlin Philharmonic in March 1955. Karajan's "Pace, speed, mio Dio" from Verdi's La forza del destino, had her impelled by her singing of "Pace, passion, mio Dio, and Karajan's "Pace, Mio Dio," and she reportedly soared to the stage to accompany Price himself. She called herself "an artist of the future" and planned her future European operatic careers.

Price began touring the United States and Canada in recitals on the Columbia Artists roster, first with composer John La Montaine as her accompanist and then with David Garvey, who remained her pianistic partner until his death. She and Garvey toured India in 1956 and then returned to Australia next year, giving concerts and recitals for the US State Department. She appeared in Verdi's Aida at the May Festival in Ann Arbor, Michigan, her first public appearance in what became her signature role.

Madame Lidoine appeared in the United States premiere of Dialogues of the Carmelites on September 20, 1957, her first appearance at a major opera house. She appeared on stage a few weeks later as Aida, substituting Antonietta Stella at the last minute. Aida, Price's first European opera debut, was held at the Vienna State Opera with Karajan conducting. This was followed by performances of the role at the Royal Opera House in London (replacing Anita Cerquetti) and the Arena di Verona.

Leonore Björling, the Swedish tenor, appeared in Verdi's Il Trovatore in San Francisco next fall. Then, who was heading to Vienna, sang Aida and her first onstage Pamina. Gerald Moore conducted a BBC television recital of American songs, as well as a series of operatic scenes by Richard Strauss for BBC Radio, which was hosted by Adler. Donna Elvira in Mozart's Don Giovanni, conducted by Erich Leinsdorf, made her first full opera recording for RCA in Vienna.

She made her debut at the Salzburg Festival in Beethoven's Missa solemnis, conducted by Karajan; recorded her second full opera, Il Trovatore, for RCA in Rome; then back to Verona to perform Il Trovatore with tenor Franco Corelli. Rudolf Bing attended one of the performances and then went backstage to invite Price and Corelli to make their Met debuts in the 1960–61 season.

Price made her Chicago Lyric Opera debut in Puccini's Turandot with Birgit Nilsson in the title role, as well as singing Massenet's Tha's. Her Liu was well-reced, but Thala Thars was considered adamant and demeanor. Aida performed at La Scala in Milan for the first time on May 21, 1960. The soirée was tumultuous, and a Milanese commentator said "our great Verdi would have chosen her the most suitable Aida." She was Italy's first African American to perform prima donna in Italy's grand opera house. (In the seconda role of Elvira in Rossini's L'Italiana in Algeri, the African soprano Mattiwilda Dobbs had appeared there two years before.) Price sang her first Donna Anna in Don Giovanni this summer, and Karajan performed her first Donna Anna in Don Giovanni. She returned to Vienna to debut first as Cio-Cio-San, Puccini's Madama Butterfly.

When Bing invited Price to perform Aida at the Metropolitan Opera in 1958, she turned him down on the advice of Adler and others, who claimed that she should wait until she had more repertoire under her belt. Adler warned against appearing in the role of Aida, an Ethiopian slave, in the racially stereotyped role. "Leontyne is going to be a great artist," Warfield writes in his autobiography. When she makes her Met debut, she must do it as a lady, not a slave." The Metropolitan offered her five roles in early 1961, Leonora in Il Trovatore, including Aida, Donna Anna, Liu, and Butterfly.

Price and Corelli made their triumphant joint debut in Il Trovatore on January 27, 1961. At least 35 minutes were ovated, one of the longest in Met history. (Price said that friends had timed it at 42 minutes, and that was the figure she used in her publicity.) In his essay, New York Times critic Harold C. Schonberg noted that Price's "voice, warm and luscious, has enough volume to fill the room with ease, and she has a natural voice to back up her voice itself. The trills were even as written, and no one in the area, as Verdi reported, had her in danger, as Verdi wrote. She moves well and is an excellent actress. But no soprano makes a living off acting. Voices are what matter, and Miss Price has a voice, and voice is what matters.

Reviewers were less confident about Corelli, who was angry and told Bing the next day that he would never perform with Price again. The outburst was soon forgotten, and Price and Corelli performed together at the Met, Salzburg State Opera, and (once more for Karajan's version of Bizet's Carmen) in the recording studio. Time magazine inserted her on its cover, and "A voice as a banner flying" in honor of her extraordinary first season at the Metropolitan Opera.

Price had reached a point in opera that no other African American had surpassed. After Anderson, three black artists had preceded Price in leading roles at the Met: baritone Robert McFerrin (1955), soprano Gloria Davy (1956), and soprano Mattiwilda Dobbs (1958). However, Price was the first prima donna and box office actress to open a season, and the first to open a season. The opening was almost impossible. A musicians' strike in September 1961 threatened to end the season, and Labor Secretary Arthur Goldberg was asked to mediate a deal. Price received raves for her opening appearance, but she faced her first vocal crisis during her second appearance. Her voice gradually faded in the middle of the second act until she was yelling the words at the end of the scene. Dorothy Kirsten, the standby, closed the show. Price was displaying a viral disease, according to the journals, but stress and the unsuitable weight of the role played their roles.

After several weeks off, Price repeated Puccini's La Fanciulla del West, and then, after a Butterfly in December, which she ended in tears, found a respite in Rome. The official word was that she had never fully recovered from the earlier virus. However, Price later admitted that she was suffering from exhaustion. In April, she returned to New York for her first Tosca and then began the spring tour in Tosca, Butterfly, and Fanciulla for the first time. Beginning in 1962, Bing announced that the Met would no longer be able to segregated houses, knowing that Price's talents were so unique she would be forced to be present on the tour. Price gave the first appearance by an African American in a leading role for the company in the South, performing Fanciulla in Dallas. Donna Anna debuted in Atlanta two years ago, marking the first leading role for an African American on tour in the Deep South. Both shows took place without incident.

Price began receiving a top fee as a result of consistently a box office sell-out in the early years. According to the Met archives, she was paid $2,750 per performance in 1964, on a par with Joan Sutherland, Maria Callas, and Renata Tebaldi. Birgit Nilsson, who performed in both Italian and Wagnerian roles, made less money at $3,000 per performance.

Price in Vienna, Milan, and Salzburg remained high. In Salzburg, Tosca and Donna Anna in Vienna, she performed a famous Il Trovatore, as well as Karajan. In several of Karajan's Requiem performances, she appeared as the soprano soloist.

Price added seven appearances to her repertoire over the next five years, including Elvira in Mozart's Cosnani, Pamina, Fiordiligi, with Tchaikovsky's Eugene Onegin and Tatyana in Pamina, Cleopatra's Antony and Cleopatra in Barber's Antony and Cleopatra, and Leonora in La forte del destino in Barcelona's

The opening night of the new Metropolitan Opera House at Lincoln Center on September 16, 1966, she performed Cleopatra in Barber's Antony and Cleopatra, a new opera commissioned for the occasion. Especially for Price, the composer had written the piece, and she was often visiting her at home with new pages of the score.

Price's singing was highly praised in previews of the premiere. However, many commentators, who found the sequence confusing, the Shakespearean text unintelligible, and director Franco Zeffirelli's production suffocatingly elaborate, called the opera a failure. Barber's essentially intimate score was buried under huge scenery, innumerable supernumeraries, and two camels, according to Zeffirelli. Bing had overreached, adding to three new productions in the first week of the new house, placing a strain on tech crews who had not yet learned the controls and lighting. Bell Telephone Hour documentary "The New Met: Countdown to Curtain" captured the chaos of Price's stunning singing as well as excerpts from Price's lyrical performances. Price later said that the experience had soured her feelings against the Met. She began to appear less often on the internet.

Antony and Cleopatra's residence was never revived at the house. Barber created a concert suite of Cleopatra's arias, which premiered by Price in Washington, DC, in 1968 and was recorded for RCA.

Price cut back her operatic performances and devoted more of her time to recitals and concerts in the late 1960s and 1990s. She was exhausted, stressed by racial unrest in the region, and her role as a sign of societal change, and she was dissatisfied with the number and quality of new Met productions. Her recitals and concerts (primarily orchestral arias with orchestra) were highly popular, and for the next two decades, she was a mainstay in the major orchestral and concert series in major American cities and universities.

She knew to remain involved in opera and returned to the Met and the San Francisco Opera, her favorite theater, for short runs of three to five performances, sometimes a year or more apart. However, she appeared in only three new roles after 1970: Giorgetta in Puccini's Il tabarro in San Francisco; Puccini's Manon Lescaut in San Francisco and New York; Puccini's Manon Lescaut; and Ariadne on Naxos, both in San Francisco and New York; and Puccini's Manon Lescaut, including in San Francisco and New York; and, in San Francisco and New York; Of these, only Ariadne was regarded as superior due to her extensive repertoire.

For the first time in a decade, she returned to the Met in October 1973 to perform Madame Butterfly for the first time in a decade. She was given a long-awaited new production of Aida in 1976, starring James McCracken as Radames and Marilyn Horne as Amneris, directed by John Dexter. In a performance of Brahms' Ein deutsche Requiem with the Berlin Philharmonic at Carnegie Hall, she revived her relationship with Karajan in the following season. She appeared more often in Europe. She appeared in the early 1970s in Hamburg as Aida and a solo Forza, as well as a visit to Covent Garden in Trovatore and Aida. In recitals, in Hamburg, Vienna, Paris, and the Salzburg Festival, she performed more often. She was a special favorite at the time, appearing in 1975, 1977, 1978, 1981, 1984, and 1984.

She had made a name for herself in the United States, and she had been asked to perform on important national festivals. At the state funeral of President Lyndon B. Johnson in January 1973, she sang "Precious Lord, Take My Hand" and "Onward, Christian Soldiers." (She had sung at his inauguration in 1965.) Following the signing of the Camp David Peace Accords, President Jimmy Carter invited her to sing at the White House on the visit of Pope John Paul II and at the state dinner. Carter invited her to perform a nationally televised recital from the East Room of the White House in 1978. "Battle Hymn of the Republic," she sang "Battle Hymn of the Republic" at a Joint Meeting of Congress on the 100th anniversary of President Franklin Roosevelt's birth in 1982. Price sang the national anthem supported by the Los Angeles Philharmonic on the opening of the Orange County Performing Arts Center in fall 1986. Presidents Reagan, George H. W. Bush, and Clinton performed.

In 1977, she made nostalgic returns to Vienna and Salzburg in Il trovatore's famed production from 1962, which was revived under Karajan. Both performances at the Vienna State Opera since 1964, when Karajan resigned as its director, was the first for both at the State Opera since 1964.

Price's last work as a result of her appearance in Ariadne on Naxos was a huge success. When she first appeared on the Met in 1979, she was suffering from a viral disease and had to cancel all but the first and last of eight scheduled performances. John Rockwell, a New York Times columnist, was not complimentary about the first performance.

She had a late triumph in San Francisco as she stepped in for an ailing Margaret Price as Aida, a role she had not played since 1976. Luciano Pavarotti, the Radames' first assumed the role. Herbert Caen of the San Francisco Chronicle said that Price had insisted on receiving more than the tenor. That would have made her the world's highest-paid opera singer. The opera house has declined to participate in the scheme.

In 1982, Price returned to the Met as Leonore in Il Trovatore, a role she hadn't played in since 1969. Marilyn Horne and conductor James Levine appeared in a televised concert of duets and arias, which was later released on record by RCA. With President Ronald and Nancy Reagan, she appeared on "In Performance from the White House" in 1983 and sang the Ballo duet with Pavarotti in the Metropolitan Opera's 100th anniversary concert.

She was considering her 1982 Met appearances as her unannounced final opera appearances, but the Met refused to allow her to return for several Forza in 1984 and a series of "Aida" in 1984-1985. In the "Live from the Met" TV series on PBS, performances of both operas were shown, her first and only appearances in the series as well as primary documents of two of her greatest performances. Shortly before her last Aida, on January 3, 1985, word leaked to the world that it was to be her operatic farewell. On the front page of the New York Times, the performance ended with 25 minutes of applause and the singer's photograph. The newspaper's reviewer, Donal Henahan, said that the "57-year-old soprano took an act or two to warm to her work, but that the Nile Scenery was well worth the wait." In 2007, PBS viewers voted her singing of the Act III aria "O patria mia" as the No. 1 in the No. ten, according to PBS viewers. In 30 years of "Live from the Met" television broadcasting, there has been one "Great Moment" in one of them. One commentator characterized Price's voice as "vibrant," "soaring," and "a Price above pearls." "Rich, supple and shining, it was in its prime capable of soaring from a smoky mezzo to a pure soprano gold of a perfectly spun high C," Time magazine described her.

Price appeared in 201 performances, both in the house and on tour, in 21 seasons with the Met. She appeared in galas in 1971–73, 1979–80, and 1982–83, since her debut in 1961. 1970–71, 1977–78, 1980–81, 1980–81, 1980–81, and 1980–83.

Price continued to perform concerts and recitals in the United States for the next ten years. Handel arias or arie antiche, Lieder by Schumann and Joseph Marx, an operatic aria or two, followed by French melodies, a series of American art songs by Barber, Ned Romman, and spirituals were often combined in her recital performances, often arranging by her long-servey David Garvey. She loved to end her anniversaries with "This Little Light of Mine," which she said was her mother's favorite spirituality.

Price's voice became more and more pronounced over time, but her upper register held up exceptionally well, and her confidence and sheer delight in singing never faded over the footlights. She appeared at the University of North Carolina's Chapel Hill on November 19, 1997, the first time she was announced last.

Price taught master classes at Juilliard and other colleges in her later years. She wrote a children's book version of Aida in 1997, which became the basis for Elton John and Tim Rice's hit Broadway musical in 2000.

Price avoided the term African American, preferring instead to identify herself as an American, even a "chauvinistic American." "If you're going to think black, think positive about it." Don't worry about it or assume it is something in your way. "You will hear you" as you really do want to stretch out and declare how stunning black is.

Price was asked to come out of retirement to perform in a memorial concert at Carnegie Hall on September 30, 2001, for the victims of the September 11 attacks. "This Little Light of Mine" was Levine's favorite spiritual, followed by an unaccompanied "God Bless America," ending it with a brilliant, simple high B-flat.

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

Source