Leontyne Price
Purple Mary Leontyne Price , born the February 10th 1927, is an American Soprano , especially known for its interpretations of heroins of Verdi, the first of which Aïda, a role which belonged to him during almost thirty years. Its rise towards the international repute in the Sixties occurs at the same time as that of other American black artists, but its art deserves above all to be regarded as a top of the American traditional song. In a generation of large singers which includes/understands in particular Joan Sutherland, Maria Callas and Montserrat Caballé, Leontyne Price was best the soprano lyrico-spinto of his time, having a rich, resounding and vibrating stamp of emotion.
Beginnings of its career
Leontyne Price was born in a black suburb from Laurel, in the the Mississippi where reign the segregation. His/her father works in a sawmill and his/her mother, who has itself a beautiful voice, is midwife. The musical talent of Leontyne appears very early and his/her parents exchange for it the family gramophone against a small piano. A rich person white family of Laurel, Chisholm, encourage the young girl by making it sing at the time of family festivals. Intending itself for a career of teaching, Price obtains a purse for the programme of musical education of the Exchange State University de Wilberforce, in Ohio, but she likes above all to sing, also continues she her studies of song. With the assistance of famous low the Paul Robeson and of Chisholm, it obtains a purse for the Juilliard School with New York where it becomes the favorite pupil of professor Florence Page Kimball. Leontyne Price sings Mistress Ford in a coed production of the Falstaff of Made green. Impressed by his performance, the critic and type-setter Virgil Thomson engage it for a resumption of his opera Four Saints in Three Acts , given on Broadway during three weeks in April 1952. It obtains its first great success with Bess in 1954 in the production of Porgy and Bess , the opera of Gershwin produces in 1954 per Blevins Davis and Robert Breen, initially in Dallas then in all United States and in Europe to finish in Broadway. After this international round, she marries with the Church Abyssinian Baptist with Harlem the baritone William Warfield who sang Porgy. They will divorce in 1972.In 1955, Leontyne Price is engaged by NBC TV Operated to sing in an English representation of Tosca of Giacomo Puccini. The distribution of a black singer, at the time a first on television, causes controversies and several chains refuse to relay the program of NBC but Leontyne Price is a great success there. The recording reveals a young soprano with a vibrato flute, an elegant English diction and a bright higher tessiture who will constitute one as of his characteristics.
Success
Two years later, Leontyne Price makes its beginnings with the opera in the role of Mrs Lidoine for first American of the Dialog of the Carmelite nuns to the Opera of San Francisco. In 1958, after a hearing arranged at the last time with Carnegie Hall for Herbert von Karajan, it is invited to make its European beginnings with the Opera of Vienna in the role of Helped. Karajan and she undertake a regular collaboration then, as well with the opera (in particular in the famous representations of the Trouvère with Salzburg in 1962), as with the concert (with the Requiem of Mozart and Verdi and the Missa Solemnis of Beethoven among other things) and with the studio where they record Tosca together, Carmen , as one of the most popular albums of Christmas carols has Christmas Offering .July 2nd, 1958, Price present for the first time its Helped on the scene of Covent Garden with London. Two years later, on May 21st, 1960, La Scala of Milan hears it and it becomes thus the first black interpreter to sing a great role in the historical house of the Italian opera.
It supplements this triumphal walk on January 27th, 1961 with its first representations of Léonore of the Trouvère of Made green with the Metropolitan Opera. It is one evening charged with adrenalin because, this day, the tenor Franco Corelli makes also his beginnings with the Met. The performance is completed on a 42 minutes ovation. The following day, critic of the NewYork Times, Harold Schonberg, written: “The voice of Leontyne Price is dark and rich in the low notes, always equal in the transitions from one register to the other, and a purity without defect and velvety in the high notes. ” According to the memories of Rudolf Bing, the director of the Met, Corelli was furious that Price collected all the attention and he would have refused to leave his cabin the next day.
There is another reason to this attention. The arrival of Price to the Met is regarded as an important step of the combat for the Civic rights. The contralto Marian Anderson had succeeded in crossing the racial barrier when it was invited to sing with the Met in 1955 and several other black artists had sung first roles there, among which the baritone Robert McFerrin, father of the popular singer Bobby McFerrin, like Mattiwilda Dobbs. But Leontyne Price is the first black professional singer with being acclaimed abroad as at it in leading roles. Price had already been invited to the Met but the proposal related to the role of Helped and his/her friends advised to him to await a role which is not a stereotype of singer of color. When it arrives at the Met, it is 34 years old, it acquired a statute of diva and it impresses the public by connecting seven roles during its first two seasons, of which Aida, Tosca and Minnie of the Fanciulla LED' West of Puccini. After it, other black singers will go on her way by making international careers, like Martina Arroyo, Shirley Verrett, Grace Bumbry, Jessye Norman or Kathleen Battle.
In 24 years, Leontyne Price occurs 201 times at the Met or in round with the company of the opera in 16 different roles. Among those, one notices Donna Anna of Don Giovanni and Fiordiligi of Cosi fan tutte of Mozart, Tatyana of Eugene Oneguine of Tchaïkovski, Minnie, role which it gave up after some representations in 1962, and Cio-cio-san of Mrs Butterfly . Many thinks however that they are heroins of Verdi, with their high melody lines and their impassioned glares, which are best to the voice of Leontyne Price as to its personality - and in particular the five roles of the median period of the type-setter: Helped, both Léonore of the Trouvère and the Force of the destiny , Elvira of Ernani and Amelia of a Ball masked .
Among the stones of key of its career, Price sings in 1966 with the opening of the new room of the Met in Lincoln Center at the time of the first of Antony and Cleopatra of the American type-setter Samuel Barber which wrote the role of Cléopâtre for the voice of Price. It is not a success because the setting in scene of Franco Zefirelli is outrageous. During the first, the revolving stage of the opera breaks down, locking up in a pyramid Leontyne Price which changes costume! Nevertheless, a few years later, the partition revised by Barber will be received at the time of the new production with Chicago then with Charleston in South Carolina and concert with Carnegie Hall in 2004. To bore and Price are friends since 1954, at the time of the first of its Hermit Songs given to the Library of the Congress with Boring with the piano. In 1969, it also creates a cycle of songs that Barber dedicated to him, Despite and Still .
In the years 1970 and 1980, Leontyne Price is made less often hear with the opera. She adds three new roles to her collection, Giorgetta of the Tabarro and Manon Lescaut of Puccini Puccini and ARIANE of ARIANE in Naxos of Richard Strauss. In 1977, it returns to the Festival of Salzburg to sing there the Trouvere directed by Herbert von Karajan, renewing its triumph of 1962. In 1982, it replaces with the foot raised Margaret Price in Aida with the Opera of San Francisco, with Luciano Pavarotti. To be sure to have it, the Company of the Opera of San Francisco accepts to pay it a dollar moreover than Pavarotti, making of it the interpreter of opera best paid in the world. Its good-byes with the opera take place with the Met in 1985, in one Aïda televised in all the country.
End of its career
It then concentrates its career on the recital, offering a program which mixes French melody, German Lied, Negro spiritual, aria of opera and the American songs, of which much was written for it by Barber, Ned Rorem and Lee Hoiby. In 1982, she sings for the Girls of the American Revolution to the Constitution Hall of Washington, cd. in a kind of repentance symbolic system on behalf of this association which, in a defamatory way, had refused to accommodate Marian Anderson in the same room in 1940. In its last years, its voice becomes heavier and translates the effort but the higher register holds exceptionally well and it always transmits an obvious conviction and a joy which enable him to obtain long ovations full with affection in all the rooms where it occurs. At 70 years, it gives what was to be its last recital with Chapel Hill, in North Carolina, on November 19th, 1997.Having recorded much, Leontyne Price obtained many rewards including 19 Grammy Awards, 13 for recitals and 5 for integral operas as well as special Grammy for the whole of its career in 1989. Its first recording of recital of opera, carried out in 1960 and titrated the blue album , reflects déjàbien the vocal personality of Leontyne Price and was several the CD republication object.
It continues to give master classes to Juilliard and in other schools. In 1997, it publishes a book of child on Aida from which Elton John and Tim Rice will write in 2000 a spectacle with success of Broadway.
In September 2001, at 74 years, Leontyne Price leaves its retirement to sing in Carnegie Hall God Bless America and a Negro spiritual This Little Light off Mine at the time of the concert in memory of the victims of the World Trade Center. She lives in Greenwich Village with New York.
Partial discography
Operas
- Strauss - ARIANE in Naxos (ARIANE) - Georg Solti - London Philharmonic Orchestrated (Decca)
- Verdi - Aida (Helped) - Georg Solti - del Teatro LED Orchestrated' Operated di Roma (Decca - recording 1962, MINOR ROAD 1987)
- Verdi - Ernani (Elvira) - Thomas Schippers - RCA Italiana Opera Orchestrated (RCA, recording 1967, MINOR ROAD 1987)
- Verdi - Forza del Destino (Elvira) - Thomas Shippers - RCA Italiana Opera Orchestrated (RCA - recording 1964, CD1988)
- Made green - the Trouvere (Leonora) - Herbert von Karajan - Philharmonic orchestra of Vienna (Deutsche Grammophon - recording 1962, MINOR ROAD 1995)
- Made green - the Trouvere (Leonora) - Zubin Mehta - New Philharmonia Orchestrated (RCA, recording 1970)
Recitals
- Leontyne Price sings Strauss Arias (RCA)
- Leontyne Price - The Prima donna Collection (RCA - 4 CD)
- The Essential Leontyne Price (BMG - 11 CD)