Leontyne Price broke opera's colour barrier on live television in 1955
When NBC broadcast Puccini's Tosca in 1955, its star was a young soprano from segregated Mississippi, the first African American to lead a televised opera. At a time when Black singers were largely shut out of opera stages, Leontyne Price went on to twenty years as a leading star of the Metropolitan Opera.
Mary Violet Leontine Price grew up in Laurel, Mississippi, born on February 10, 1927, under Jim Crow laws that barred Black residents from sharing schools, churches and theatres with white neighbours. Her father worked in the sawmills and as a carpenter; her mother, a nurse and midwife, delivered hundreds of local babies and sang solos in the choir of their all-Black Methodist church, with Leontyne singing beside her. Both sets of grandparents were Methodist ministers, and her younger brother George became a brigadier general.
She studied at Wilberforce University and then at Juilliard with Florence Kimball. Early breaks came in Virgil Thomson's Four Saints in Three Acts, on Broadway and in Paris, and in a revival of Porgy and Bess, where she married her co-star William Warfield. In 1953 she gave the premiere of Samuel Barber's Hermit Songs at the Library of Congress with the composer at the piano, beginning a long partnership.
The Tosca broadcast and performances in San Francisco, including Aida, made her name internationally. Her Met debut in 1961 as Leonora in Il trovatore launched the first sustained relationship between the company and a Black singer. She created Cleopatra in Barber's Antony and Cleopatra and sang in Vienna, London, Chicago and at La Scala. Verdi's middle-period heroines were her greatest successes, above all Aida, the role of her Met farewell in 1985.
Price called herself a lyric soprano, though scholars have labelled her voice dramatic or spinto, and critics often found her musical subtlety outshone her acting. After leaving opera she gave recitals and concerts until 1998, returning occasionally, including for a 2001 Carnegie Hall memorial concert after the 9/11 attacks. Her honours include the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1964 and 13 Grammy Awards.
Source: Leontyne Price
