I have downloaded several videos featuring the great Diva of Opera, Leontyne Price. My favorites are
"Ave Marie" and "O Patria Mia". Philip Kennicott writing for "Opera News states: "On recording Price can be a chameleon, her voice full of shifting colors, her performances spanning a disconcerting range from the Apollonian reserve of her song recitals to the terrifying intensity of her operatic persona". What are your favorite performances. If you would like to read Philip Kennicott's essay, click the link below.
Leontyne Price
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Leontyne Price in 1994 by Jack Mitchell
Mary Violet Leontyne Price (born February 10, 1927) is an American soprano. Born and raised in Laurel, Mississippi, she rose to international acclaim in the 1950s and 1960s, and was one of the first African Americans to become a leading artist at the Metropolitan Opera.
One critic characterized Price's voice as "vibrant", "soaring" and "a Price beyond pearls", as well as "genuinely buttery, carefully produced but firmly under control", with phrases that "took on a seductive sinuousness." Time magazine called her voice "Rich, supple and shining, it was in its prime capable of effortlessly soaring from a smoky mezzo to the pure soprano gold of a perfectly spun high C."
A lirico spinto (Italian for "pushed lyric") soprano, she was considered especially well suited to the roles of Giuseppe Verdi and Giacomo Puccini, as well as several in operas by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.
After her retirement from the opera stage in 1985, she continued to appear in recitals and orchestral concerts for another 12 years.
Among her many honors are the Presidential Medal of Freedom (1964), the Spingarn Medal (1965),[7] the Kennedy Center Honors (1980), the National Medal of Arts (1985), numerous honorary degrees, and nineteen Grammy Awards, 13 for operatic or song recitals, five for full operas, and a special Lifetime Achievement Award in 1989, more than any other classical singer. In October 2008, she was one of the recipients of the first Opera Honors given by the National Endowment for the Arts.
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Opera News
Philip Kennicott, Titled: Defining Diva
http://www.operanews.com/Opera_News_Magazine/2014/11/Features/Defining_Diva.html
Leontyne Price Opera Farewell "O patria mia"
Leontyne Price - La Forza del destino - Verdi (NY 1982)
Leontyne Price "Libera me Domine" Verdi Requiem Leontyne Price "Libera me Domine" Verdi Requiem
Leontyne Price "Ave Maria " by Schubert
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