We should not have a tin cup out for something as important as the arts in this country, the richest in the world. Creative artists are always begging, but always being used when it's time to show us at our best.

Leontyne Price, quoted in Brian Lanker, I Dream a World: Portraits of Black Women Who Changed America (New York: Stewart, Tabori & Chang, 1989), page 44.

Portrait of Leontyne Price,
singing "La Voyante of Sanguet,"
Carl Van Vechten, photographer,
May 19, 1953.
Creative Americans: Portraits by Van Vechten, 1932-1964

Lyric soprano Leontyne Price was born on February 10, 1927, in Laurel, Mississippi. Price debuted on Broadway in April 1952. Her successful career took her to leading opera houses around the world and brought eighteen Grammy awards as well as the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

The granddaughter of two Methodist ministers, Price began singing in church. Her parents encouraged her musical inclination at home. When she was five or six years old, they purchased a toy piano. "I was center stage," Price remembered, "from the time I received that toy piano…I had the disease then…"¹

Portrait of Leontyne Price, Porgy & Bess,
Carl Van Vechten, photographer,
May 19, 1953.
Creative Americans: Portraits by Van Vechten, 1938-1964

As a young girl, Price heard legendary contralto Marian Anderson perform. "When I saw this wonderful woman come from the wings in this white satin dress," she remembered, "I knew instantly: one of these days, I'm going to come out of the wings…The light dawned. It was a magic moment."²

After graduating from Central State College in Wilberforce, Ohio, Price attended The Juilliard School of Music in New York City. She sang the role of Bess in Ira Gershwin's Porgy and Bess in New York City from 1952-54 and made her operatic debut at the San Francisco Opera in 1957. Despite the praise of European critics and enormous popularity at home, Price did not appear at the Metropolitan Opera in New York City until 1961. She performed there regularly, however, after her triumphant debut performance in Il Trovatore.

• Learn more about famous American singers and entertainers. Read Today in History features on Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald, Carol Channing, Mahalia Jackson, and Lillian Russell. Among the men represented are Frank Sinatra, W. C. Handy, George M. Cohan, Orson Wells and John Houseman, and Louis Jordan.
• Examine part of the manuscript score-sketch of Porgy and Bess. Visit the Imagination section of American Treasures of the Library of Congress and scroll down to the section entitled "Music, Theatre, and Dance" to find this and other treasures from the theater world.
• Explore images of The Juilliard School of Music, Price's alma mater and an internationally known school of the performing arts. Search the collection Architecture and Interior Design for 20th Century America, 1935-1955 on Juilliard to see more than one hundred photographs of set design and costumes used in productions sponsored by this respected institution.
• View images of Laurel, Mississippi, birthplace of Leontyne Price. Search the State and County Index of the FSA/OWI Black and White Photographs, 1935-1945.

Piano Keyboard with Hands Playing,
Theodor Horydczak, photographer,
circa 1920-50.
Washington As It Was, 1923-1959

¹Brian Lanker, I Dream a World: Portraits of Black Women Who Changed America.
²ibid.