{"id":2342,"date":"2017-02-10T14:57:48","date_gmt":"2017-02-10T19:57:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.harvard.edu\/loebmusic\/?p=2342"},"modified":"2017-02-10T14:58:30","modified_gmt":"2017-02-10T19:58:30","slug":"happy-90th-birthday-to-leontyne-price","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/loebmusic\/2017\/02\/10\/happy-90th-birthday-to-leontyne-price\/","title":{"rendered":"Happy 90th Birthday to Leontyne Price!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: left\">Legendary American soprano Leontyne Price celebrates her 90th birthday on February 10. This coincides with the 50th anniversary season of the Metropolitan Opera at its present Lincoln Center home. The premiere of American composer Samuel Barber\u2019s <em>Antony and Cleopatra<\/em> christened the new opera house on September 16, 1966, a suitably grand-scaled work based on Shakespeare\u2019s tragedy and written especially for Price as Cleopatra. Price and the Metropolitan Opera were almost synonymous in the 1960s, beginning with the thunderous acclaim that greeted her house debut in 1961 (a co-debut on January 27th with tenor Franco Corelli). Price came to the Met just as she reached the prime of a great career; her performances were a highlight of each season in which she sang.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center\"><a title=\"Jack Mitchell [CC BY-SA 4.0-3.0-2.5-2.0-1.0 (http:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by-sa\/4.0-3.0-2.5-2.0-1.0)], via Wikimedia Commons\" href=\"https:\/\/commons.wikimedia.org\/wiki\/File%3ALeontyne_Price_(b%26w)_by_Jack_Mitchell.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter\" src=\"https:\/\/upload.wikimedia.org\/wikipedia\/commons\/0\/05\/Leontyne_Price_%28b%26w%29_by_Jack_Mitchell.jpg\" alt=\"Leontyne Price (b&amp;w) by Jack Mitchell\" width=\"256\" \/><\/a><em>Leontyne Price, 1981 &#8211; Photograph by Jack Mitchell, CC BY-SA<\/em><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left\">When the announcement of <em>Antony and Cleopatra<\/em> was made, Barber and Price had been artistic collaborators for more than a decade. A singer himself, the composer knew Price\u2019s voice and what it could do, and that shaped his conception of the opera\u2019s heroine. \u201cEvery vowel,\u201d he told The New York Times, \u201cwas placed with Leontyne\u2019s voice in mind.\u201d The Met\u2019s CD presentation of <em>Antony and Cleopatra<\/em>\u00a0in its newly-released inaugural season box set is the first release of the original version of the work, the sole other recording (Spoleto, 1983) being Barber\u2019s 1975 revision, which differs significantly. Price\u2019s Town Hall recital debut in 1954 featured the first New York performance of Barber\u2019s Hermit Songs. The previous year, Price had sung the premiere of the work at the Library of Congress, Washington, D.C., with Barber at the piano (October 30, 1953), a performance likewise preserved on recording (Loeb Music Library, CD 12283 (<a href=\"http:\/\/id.lib.harvard.edu\/aleph\/004366408\/catalog\">HOLLIS record<\/a>)).<\/p>\n<p>-Robert J. Dennis<\/p>\n<p>Explore Further<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>In the HOLLIS Catalog: <a href=\"http:\/\/hollis.harvard.edu\/primo_library\/libweb\/action\/dlSearch.do?vid=HVD&amp;institution=HVD&amp;pcAvailabiltyMode=true&amp;tab=books&amp;indx=1&amp;bulkSize=30&amp;srt=relevance&amp;sortField=default&amp;search_scope=default_scope&amp;query=any,contains,leontyne%20price\">Leontyne Price<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/metopera.org.ezp-prod1.hul.harvard.edu\/Season\/On-Demand\/opera\/?upc=811357016749\"><em>Antony and Cleopatra<\/em>, Metropolitan Opera Live Audio Recording, September 16, 1966<\/a> (requires Harvard ID)<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/archives.metoperafamily.org\/Imgs\/Antony6667.htm\">Metropolitan Opera Production Photos, <em>Antony and Cleopatra<\/em><\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/archives.metoperafamily.org\/archives\/frame.htm\">Met Opera Database<\/a>: the Metropolitan Opera Archives&#8217; performance history search &#8211; often including reviews and production stills<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/memory.loc.gov\/diglib\/ihas\/loc.natlib.ihas.200183698\/default.html\">Samuel Barber at the Library of Congress<\/a>: the main repository for Barber manuscripts and correspondence<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.loc.gov\/exhibits\/treasures\/tri195.html\">American Treasures of the Library of Congress: <em>Antony and Cleopatra<em> as Opera<\/em><\/em><\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Other birthday tributes<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Tom Huizenga (Deceptive Cadence): <a href=\"http:\/\/www.npr.org\/sections\/deceptivecadence\/2017\/02\/10\/513284623\/leontyne-price-at-90-the-voice-we-still-love-to-talk-about\">Leontyne Price At 90: The Voice We Still Love To Talk About<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.gramophone.co.uk\/classical-music-news\/this-week-gramophone-celebrates-leontyne-price-at-90\">Gramophone celebrates Leontyne Price at 90<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Legendary American soprano Leontyne Price celebrates her 90th birthday on February 10. This coincides with the 50th anniversary season of the Metropolitan Opera at its present Lincoln Center home. The premiere of American composer Samuel Barber\u2019s Antony and Cleopatra christened the new opera house on September 16, 1966, a suitably grand-scaled work based on Shakespeare\u2019s [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2249,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_seo_schema_type":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":true,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[82,14837],"tags":[149773,5832,132983],"class_list":["post-2342","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","category-recordings-collection","tag-leontyne-price","tag-opera","tag-samuel-barber","post-preview"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6lSEF-BM","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/loebmusic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2342","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/loebmusic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/loebmusic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/loebmusic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2249"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/loebmusic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2342"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/loebmusic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2342\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2366,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/loebmusic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2342\/revisions\/2366"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/loebmusic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2342"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/loebmusic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2342"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/loebmusic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2342"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}