Leontyne Price

BORN: FEBRUARY 10, 1927, LAUREL, MS

The color of my skin or the kink of my hair or the spread of my mouth has nothing to do with what you are listening to.

Leontyne Price is a lyric soprano who was the first leading African American prima donna to perform with the New York Metropolitan Opera. When she performed Il Trovatore on January 27, 1961, she received an ovation that lasted forty-two minutes, one of the longest in Met history. Leontyne’s voice has been described as “luscious, warm, buttery, rich, vibrant, voluminous, and soaring.” During her tenure at the Met, she received the highest of praise while singing leading roles in Madama Butterfly, Tosca, Aida, Falstaff, Don Giovanni, Porgy and Bess, and Antony and Cleopatra, among many others. Critic Harold C. Schonberg wrote in a New York Times review, “Voice is what counts, and voice is what Miss Price has.”

Mary Violet Leontyne Price’s parents recognized their daughter’s extraordinary musical gifts early on. At age three, they bought her a toy piano. Leontyne began piano lessons in her Mississippi hometown, and by the time she was in kindergarten, her parents traded in the family phonograph as the down payment for an upright piano. Leontyne was nine years old when she heard Marian Anderson sing in a concert in Jackson, Mississippi, and decided on a career as an opera singer.

From her humble beginnings, Leontyne went on to study music education at Wilberforce College in Ohio and voice at the Juilliard School. She made her recital debut at New York’s Town Hall in November 1954, and she was the first African American to sing a leading opera role on national television. Leontyne performed nationally and internationally, and in May 1960, she made her first appearance in a leading role at La Scala in Milan, Italy. Leontyne performed highly successful concerts and recitals throughout the 1970s.

She retired from opera in 1985 but continued to perform until 1997. Her concert programs usually combined Handel arias, German Lieder, and French and American art songs, and ended with spirituals.

Among her many accomplishments, Leontyne won nineteen Grammys, the NAACP Spingarn Medal, a Kennedy Center Honor, and the National Medal of Arts.