Today In History Leontyne Price, world-renowned opera singer, and the first African American singer to achieve an international reputation in opera—made her formal debut at the Metropolitan Opera House on this date January 27, 1961. Both of Price’s grandfathers had been Methodist ministers in Black churches in Mississippi, and she sang in her church choir as a girl. Only when she graduated from the College of Education and Industrial Arts (now Central State College) in Wilberforce, Ohio, in 1948 did she decide to seek a career as a singer. She studied for four years at the Juilliard School of Music in New York City, where she worked under the former concert singer Florence Page Kimball, who remained her coach in later years. Her debut took place in April 1952 in a Broadway revival of Four Saints in Three Acts by Virgil Thomson and Gertrude Stein. Leontyne Price performance in that production, which subsequently traveled to Paris, prompted Ira Gershwin to choose her to sing the role of Bess in his revival of Porgy and Bess, which played in New York City from 1952 to 1954 and then toured the United States and Europe. The year 1955 saw her triumphant performance of the title role in the National Broadcasting Company’s television production of Tosca, and she sang leading roles in other operas on television in the next few years. CARTER™️ Magazine carter-mag.com #wherehistoryandhiphopmeet #cartermagazine #historyandhiphop365 #carter #leontyneprice #blackhistorymonth #blackhistory #history #staywoke https://www.instagram.com/p/Cn6lbq8ue2W/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=
