Leontyne Price

Leontyne Price, born Mary Violet Leontine Price on February 10, 1927, in Laurel, Mississippi, was the first Black soprano to earn worldwide recognition. Her career took off after she began a lasting partnership with the Metropolitan Opera in 1961, making her the first African-American singer to have a steady, long-term role with that company. She performed regularly at top opera houses globally, such as the Vienna State Opera, the Royal Opera House, San Francisco Opera, Lyric Opera of Chicago, and La Scala, and was especially famous for playing the lead in Verdi’s Aida. Price studied at Wilberforce University and Juilliard under Florence Kimball.

Early career

Her first major job came with Virgil Thomson’s Four Saints in Three Acts, which she performed on Broadway and in Paris. That same year, she starred in the third revival of Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess and married her co-star, bass-baritone William Warfield. In 1953, she began a long collaboration with composer Samuel Barber, premiering his Hermit Songs at the Library of Congress with him as her accompanist.

Emergence on the opera stage

In 1955, Price broke new ground as the first African American to headline a televised opera, singing the title role in Puccini’s Tosca with the NBC Opera Theatre. This broadcast was seen as a major step in ending racial barriers for Black opera singers. That performance, along with appearances at the San Francisco Opera in Poulenc’s Dialogues des Carmélites and Aida, brought her international fame. She then sang Aida at many major houses before her successful Met debut in 1961 as Leonora in Verdi’s Il trovatore.

Metropolitan Opera

Over the next 20 years, she performed a wide range of roles at the Met, including the world premiere of Barber’s Antony and Cleopatra. She gave her final opera performance at the Met in 1985, again in Aida. Price described her voice as a lyric soprano, though scholars often call it dramatic or spinto. Her musical interpretations were subtle and sometimes outshone her acting.

She was praised for roles in Mozart and Puccini operas, as well as Cleopatra in Handel’s Giulio Cesare and Poppea in Monteverdi’s L’incoronazione di Poppea. Still, her greatest triumphs came in Verdi’s middle-period works: Aida, the Leonoras of Il trovatore and La forza del destino, and Amelia in Un ballo in maschera. Many recordings preserve these performances.

Awards and honors

After retiring from opera, Price continued giving recitals and orchestral concerts until 1998. She later came out of retirement for special events, like a 2001 memorial concert at Carnegie Hall for the victims of the 9/11 attacks. Her honors include the Presidential Medal of Freedom (1964) and 13 Grammy Awards. Mary Violet Leontine Price was born in Laurel, Mississippi, on February 10, 1927.

Her parents gave her the middle name Leontine, a feminized version of Leon, chosen to honor her father’s best friend. Her only sibling, brother George, was born in 1929 and later became a brigadier general in the U.S. Army, living until age 95 in 2024. Her father, James Anthony Price, worked in sawmills and as a part-time carpenter. Her mother, Katherine Viola Price (née Baker), was a licensed practical nurse and midwife who delivered hundreds of babies.

Both parents were deeply religious, and her grandparents on both sides were Methodist ministers. Singer Dionne Warwick has said she is a cousin on Price’s maternal side. Price grew up during racial segregation under Jim Crow laws, which meant Black Americans could not share schools, churches, restaurants, restrooms, or theaters with white people. Her family lived in Laurel’s south side, the town’s Black neighborhood, in a middle-class section.

She attended all-Black schools, including Sandy Gavin Elementary, and worshipped at Saint Paul’s Methodist Church, an all-Black congregation. Her mother, a talented amateur singer, was a soloist in the church choir, and Leontyne sang alongside her there. Her father played tuba in the church band.

Price showed an early love for music, starting piano lessons at age three and a half with local pianist Hattie McInnis, one of the few Black music teachers who had studied under composer Carl Orff. She began on a toy piano, but by age five, her parents traded in the family phonograph as a down payment on an upright piano. She studied with McInnis for over twelve years, taking both piano and voice lessons. She also honed her piano skills at Saint Paul’s, playing regularly for Sunday school and church services.