Mary Violet Leontyne Price is an American soprano, born and raised in Laurel, Mississipi. She rose to international acclaim in the 1950s and 1960s. She was the first African American to become a leading performer at the Metropolitan Opera and one of her generation’s most popular American classical singers.
Time magazine called her voice “Rich, supple and shining, it was in its prime capable of effortless soaring a smoky mezzo to the pure soprano gold of a perfectly spun high C. “
A lirico spinto soprano, she was considered especially well suited for the heroines of Giuseppe Verdi’s “middle period “operas, such as Aida, Il Trovatore, La Forza del Destino and Ballo in Maschera. She was also noted for her interpretations of leading roles in operas by Giacomo Puccini and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.
Her first contact with music was at age five when she began piano lessons with a local teacher.
At 14, she was taken on a school trip to hear Marian Anderson sing a recital, an experience she later said was inspirational: “the minute she came on stage, I knew I wanted to walk like that, look like that, and if possible, sound something near that, “she told in an interviewer in 2008.
In her second year, she heard Ljuba Welitsch sing Salome by Richard Strauss at the Metropolitan Opera House and became fascinated by opera. So, in 1950, she joined Julliard’s Opera Workshop and sang her first small roles in workshop performances of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s Magic Flute (First Lady) and Giacomo Puccini’s Gianni Schicci (Aunt Nella).
The door to opera opened through the NBC Opera Theatre under music director Peter Herman Adler. In January 1955, she sang the title role in Giacomo Puccini’s Tosca, the first appearance by an African American in a leading role in televised opera.
In March 1955, she was taken by her agent to audition at Carnegie Hall. Impressed by her singing of “Pace, pace mio Dio “from Giuseppe Verdi’s “La forza del destino “, Karajan asked to be allowed to direct her future European career.
The Met had been slow to offer Price a major contract. The Met agreed to her manager’s insistence that she should debut as Leonora in Il Trovatore by Giuseppe Verdi, a traditionally white role. Shortly before her debut, Bing extended her first-season contract to include two recently added roles, Liu from Giacomo Puccini’s Turandot and Butterfly from Madama Butterfly.
On 27th January 1961, Price and Corelli made a triumphant debut in Il Trovatore. The performance ended with an ovation that lasted at least 35 minutes, one of the longest in Met history.
While her Met star rose, Price remained busily engaged in Vienna, Milan, and Salzburg. She sang in a famous production of Il Trovatore by Giuseppe Verdi in Salzburg in 1962 and 1963. Moreover, she gave performances of Tosca by Giacomo Puccini in Vienna in 1963 and 1964, all under Herbert von Karajan. Karajan also chose her as his soprano soloist in many of Giuseppe Verdi’s Requiem performances.
After her first Met season, Price added seven roles to her repertoire: Elvira in Giuseppe Verdi’s Ernani, Pamina in Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s The Magic Flute, Fiordiligi in Mozart’s Cosi fan tutte, Tatyana in Piotr Ilyich Tschaikowski’s Eugene Oneghin, Amelia from Un ballo in Maschera by Giussepe Verdi, Cleopatra in Samuel Barber’s Antony and Cleopatra, and Leonora from La forza del destino by Giuseppe Verdi.
The biggest milestone in her career was the new Metropolitan Opera House opening night at Lincoln Center on 16th September 1966, when she sang Cleopatra in Antony and Cleopatra by American composer Samuel Barber, a new opera commissioned for the occasion. The composer had written the role, especially for Price, often visiting her home in Greenwich Village to try out new pages of the score.
Price’s singing was highly praised during the event, especially her soaring moments in the climactic death scene, where she sang from a magnificent high throne. However, the opera was widely considered a failure.
In the late 1960s, Leontyne Price cut back her operatic performances and devoted more of her career to recitals and concerts.
She knew to keep a presence in opera and returned to the Metropolitan Opera and the San Francisco Opera, her favourite house, for short runs of three to five performances. However, she undertook only three new roles after 1970: Giorgetta in Giacomo Puccini’s Il tabarro (San Francisco only), Giacomo Puccini’s Manon Lescaut (San Francisco and New York), and Ariadne in Richard Strauss’ Ariadne of Naxos (San Francisco and New York). Of these, only Ariadne was considered as excellent as her established repertoire.
She appeared more rarely in Europe. In the early 1970s, she sang Aida and a single La Forza del destino in Hamburg and returned to London’s Covent Garden in Il Trovatore and Aida.
In the U.S., she had become an iconic figure and was regularly asked to sing on important national occasions.
President Jimmy Carter invited her to sing at the White House for the visit of Pope John Paul II and at the state dinner after the signing of the Camp David Peace Accords. In 1978, Carter invited her to sing a nationally televised recital from the East Room of the White House. In 1982, she sang “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” before a Meeting of Congress on the 100th anniversary of the birth of President Franklin Roosevelt. She sang for President Ronald Reagan, George Herbert Walker Bush, and Bill Clinton.