Member-only story
Featured
How Leontyne Price Beat the Odds
It took a lot more than the gene pool she shares with Dionne Warwick and Whitney Houston to turn the opera star into legend.
When Leontyne Price celebrated her 98th birthday on February 10th, my thoughts turned to her famous cousins Dione Warwick and Witney Houston. But also to her humble upbringing in Mississippi, my old Atlanta schoolmate Gwenn Craig, and the cultural importance of the Ed Sullivan Show. This probably means I suffer from monkey mind. But in this case, all the monkey bars are connected.
Like most people who become celebrated icons, Leontyne Price didn’t start out that way. When she was born, no one imagined that she’d become an internationally renowned soprano. Nor could they have guessed that her debut at New York’s Metropolitan Opera would make history twice. One, as the first African American to perform the leading role in Verdi’s Il Trovatore on that stage. And second, as the recipient of a 42-minute ovation, a record matched by no other performer before or since.
After all, she was just a poor Black child from segregated Mississippi — which holds the record for lynching more African Americans than any other state in the union. Between 1882 and 1968, there were 539 unlawful vigilante deaths in the so-called Hospitality State, easily…
