Great Performers: Leontyne Price
Let me stick my neck out and say that Leontyne Price was the possessor of the greatest classical voice ever to have come out of the United States. Her wonderfully rich, rounded soprano propelled her, an African-American singer, right to the top of the hierarchy of great singers from the mid 1950s to the mid 1980s, when she retired from operatic performances. At the peak of her career she was one of the highest paid singers in the world.
Read more…Born in Laurel, Mississippi, she was inspired, at the age of 14, by hearing Marian Anderson sing. Her own talent was spotted in her teens and she entered the all-black Wilberforce College in Ohio. Her talent was such that in 1948 she won a scholarship to the Juilliard School in New York. New York would remain her home throughout her career; she now lives in Maryland.
One of her first roles was in Gershwin's 'Porgy and Bess', and she took part in a production that not only toured the US but also Europe. She also married her leading man, the Porgy in that production, William Warfield (you can hear them singing together in the opera in the playlist). Around this time, she sang a lot of new music, much of it inspired by her extraordinary voice and her impressive stage presence. Samuel Barber entrusted the premiere of his 'Hermit Songs' to her, and she would remain a champion of his music, recording 'Knoxville, Summer of 1915' and also singing Cleopatra in 'Antony and Cleopatra' at the 1966 opening of the new Met, a production seriously hampered by Franco Zeffirelli's over-elaborate staging. Her recording of a couple of the opera's arias reveals what a magnificent Cleopatra she was (a complete live recording also exists). Price, faithful to Samuel Barber to the last, defends the opera passionately and she championed a concert suite that the composer drew from the opera for many years. Regal but human, Price’s Cleopatra is a thing of wonder.
Auditioning at Carnegie Hall for Herbert von Karajan during a 1955 Berlin Philharmonic tour of the USA opened a new door in her career that launched her in Europe, and the Austrian conductor remained loyal to her: she recorded the title roles of 'Carmen' and 'Tosca' with him, Leonore in Verdi’s Il trovatore, and the soprano parts in the Verdi and Mozart Requiems and Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. He even made a now-classic Christmas album with her and the Vienna Philharmonic for Decca, an honour he granted to no other singer.
Price's voice, in common with many a great artist, is immediately recognisable: it has a colour like no other (think the deepest purples and violets with the texture of velvet), colossal power but also a delicacy that she would use to heart-stopping effect. Price was perhaps at her greatest in the music of Verdi and the role that she made entirely her own was Aida. "My skin was my costume," was one of her favourite remarks when asked about the part in interviews, and she made this noble but so-human woman a thing of flesh and blood. The trajectory of Aida’s dramatic journey is handled faultlessly and the voice fills every bar not just with ease but with narrative intensity.
Price’s professional story is an object lesson in how natural talent and hard work can transform a life. She suffered racial prejudice in her childhood and early years (many southern States NBC affiliates refused to air her Opera Theater broadcast of 'Tosca' in 1955 because it would have shown a black Tosca with a white lover, Cavaradossi), but within a few years she reigned supreme, a true diva: American-born, fiercely proud of her country and celebrated the world over for her magnificent artistry.