Bass Alvin Crawford with Leontyne Price at the legendary soprano’s Juilliard masterclass on October 8, 2003.
In celebration of Black History Month and of the 90th birthday of Leontyne Price — the legendary soprano and first African-American woman to achieve operatic superstardom — I am republishing here my article about Ms. Price’s historic 2003 masterclass (first published in the Juilliard Journal). I was in my third year at Juilliard when I attended the class, and for me (and the hundreds of other students and opera fans packed into the theater that autumn afternoon), the petite, ageless diva stopped time for a moment with lessons purportedly about opera arias, but in fact centering on how to live a fully engaged, fearless, authentic life. Her words that day (delivered in her mellow clarinet of a speaking voice, equal parts Mississippi warm and European regal) resonate for me today, fourteen years later, as freshly as they did that afternoon.
You’re Out of the Studio Now, Angel
The manner in which Leontyne Price took the stage of the Juilliard Theater for her masterclass on October 8 was indicative of the spirit of the three-and-a-half hours that would follow. Entering quietly, almost gingerly, to a deafening ovation from the packed house, Ms. Price listened and acknowledged our star-struck appreciation for several moments, then hushed us with a gesture. With one smooth “sit down, please!” motion of her hand, she indicated that today's class would be about the work, and any audience attempts at heroine-worship would be quickly and humorously deflected. Her focus today would be on the young singers onstage — their sounds, their processes, their interpretations. Today, she said, would be “about your journey beyond the studio and over to that plaza over there,” waving an elegant hand toward the Lincoln Center theaters just beyond our Juilliard School walls.
While constantly praising the fundamentals she herself learned as a Juilliard student (a magnificently demonstrated high B-flat was followed by the aside, “I learned that here!”), Ms. Price chose as her theme for the afternoon the development of each artist’s unique identity. While addressing various technical and stylistic specifics, her teaching constantly returned to a central theme: the transcending of self-consciousness and the excavation of the essential uniqueness of each individual performance. “You're out of the studio now, angel,” she said. “This is where the journey begins.”
An American Troubadour
Leontyne Price's own journey began in 1927 in segregated Laurel, Mississippi, where she was raised, and her musical talents nurtured, by her family and community. She received a scholarship to attend Ohio's Central State College as a music education major, and later — with the assistance of Paul Robeson, the Chisholm family (her aunt's employers), and the School's administration — she came to Juilliard and began her study with Florence Page Kimball. (It is to Ms. Kimball, who instilled in her young pupil the importance of “singing on your interest and not your capital,” that Ms. Price attributes her longevity in the famously voice-devouring canon of heroic Verdi roles.) While at Juilliard, she performed roles in Virgil Thomson's Four Saints in Three Acts, Verdi's Falstaff, and Gershwin's Porgy and Bess (the latter opposite her future husband William Warfield).
From Juilliard, she went on to tour Europe in the Porgy and Bess cast, singing for Herbert von Karajan in Vienna and, in 1960, making her debut at La Scala in the title role of Verdi’s Aida, which she called “my warrior part, my heart-beat, the role that made me feel even more beautifully black, and the only time when, as a black soprano, I got to sing a black heroine.” In 1961, she made her Metropolitan Opera debut in Il Trovatore with Franco Corelli in a performance greeted with a 42-minute ovation that to this day maintains its record as one of the longest in the house's history. In subsequent years, she established herself not only as the great Verdian soprano of the century, but also as a figurehead and a healer — an artist who, during a divisive time in our country's history, championed American song in all of its breadth and richness, sang recitals in venues small and large, and toured with the Met in the segregated South when the company had to boycott opening-night festivities that were "whites-only" affairs. She has described her career as that of “an American troubadour” — a title both elegant and earthy and, as such, perfectly descriptive of Ms. Price herself.
On the Highwire, Just One More Step
The first singer of the masterclass was soprano Susanna Phillips, who gave a beautifully poised rendition of the Countess's aria “Dove sono i bei momenti” from Le Nozze di Figaro, deftly accompanied by Donna Gill at the piano. Aware of the effect of her star status on the students and the innate difficulty of the masterclass medium, Ms. Price began her work with Susanna by applauding her performance, taking her hand, and saying, “Well, okay, you did it. Now that's out of the way!” She continued, “I just want you to give us a little more! And, no, angel, I don't mean volume; I don't mean pumping. I mean focus. Even in staid roles, you must be warm, open, alive. Don't make this great genius of Mozart, well, ‘precieuse.’ Your voice is stunning. I want you to enjoy it more. If you enjoy it more, we will too. The fire of the recitative, delivered quickly, will bring out the plaintiveness of the legato aria that follows.” Susanna proceeded to take the aria again from the top, with an intensity that (in conversation after the class) she said she had never experienced before. The result was thrilling for her and for the audience.
With mezzo-soprano Fenna Ograjensek, who performed “All'afflitto è dolce il pianto” from Roberto Devereux with Michael Baitzer at the piano, and with tenor Steven Paul Spears, who performed “Il mio tesoro” from Don Giovanni with Ho-Jeong Jeong at the piano, Ms. Price continued her emphasis on intensity of focus combined with sheer, sensual delight in one's own instrument. Responding to her encouragement, the singers went on to deliver phrases of increasing ease and color, with Fenna singing her final cadenza hand-in-hand with Ms. Price with utter beauty and ease, and Steven becoming a Spanish nobleman before our very eyes.
Ms. Price exhorted Steven to “show us with the voice what later your sword and boots and all of your character's period costume will show us in the theater. I am getting some of the intent and the valor of Don Ottavio, but I want even more.” As for the treacherously long fioritura passages that have been the stumbling block of lesser Don Ottavios, Ms. Price demanded them from Steven all on one breath, which he deftly obliged. “Singing is like being on a highwire,” she said. "Look, you're already up there on the wire. I am just asking you to take one more step. I know you can do it, but you must know you can do it." After his graceful execution of her request, she clapped her hands and laughed, "Now, if you sing it like that, Donna Anna and all those girls are going to have to watch their step!”
Love It More
With bass Alvin Crawford, accompanied by Michael Baitzer in “Il lacerato spirito” from Simon Boccanegra, Ms. Price continued to focus on the dual issues of full immersion in the music and generous delivery of an individualized sound. “It's good, angel! In fact, it's magnificent. But I want it to be more magnificent. Can you give us more? Again, I don't mean louder; I mean more sonorous. I want you to bow your sound. I want you to love it more. You cannot be too involved here. You must be the first person on the list to dig this, and the more you dig it, the more they will — excuse the vernacular!”
Praising Michael's deeply felt piano introduction, she encouraged Alvin to listen and respond to it more intensely. “Hear the genius of Verdi doing everything for you, dramatically, in that introduction. Focus, and listen to Verdi telling you to sing. He wants your words — the ‘dunkel’ in the ’mmm’ of ’maledetto!’ — and he wants the aria to be more you, more wonderfully tall and strong!” Referring to the later maturation of bass voices, she counseled Alvin to be patient: "What you do best will be down yonder — am I being too country? — but you must prepare for it now!” Alvin, in response, delivered a final cadenza of great, rolling warmth. "Okay, angel! Now you understand what we want!”
The final three singers presented arias from roles with which Ms. Price has been identified. Mezzo-soprano Abby Powell, accompanied by Michael Baitzer, presented the "Habanera” from Carmen, a role recorded by Ms. Price. "Carmen is not coy; she is definite and real, a cigarette diva with her own kind of elegance,” she told Abby. "I want to see that sureness, and remember, when you truly are sure of yourself, you don't have to do a lot.” Soprano Melissa Shippen, also accompanied by Michael, performed “Sì, mi chiamano Mimì” from La bohème, after which Ms. Price applauded and exclaimed, "I liked that! You know why?” (Here, a conspiratorial twinkle in her eye.) "Because you liked it!” Soprano Soo-kyung Ahn followed with "Come scoglio“ from Così fan tutte, accompanied by Donna Gill. As with Susanna's Countess, Ms. Price focused on the way in which the recitativo accompagnato must be built carefully and completely, so that its progression into the subsequent aria has an expressive logic. Abby, Melissa, and Soo-kyung all responded to Ms. Price's words and energy with ever-increasing tonal and dramatic color, leaving the audience shouting and Ms. Price beaming.
An Inspired Life
At the outset of the class, Juilliard President Joseph Polisi had begun his introduction of Ms. Price with a well-worn saying, often repeated after long days in windowless rehearsal studios in homage to our school's hallowed history and in rueful recognition of its lack of windows that actually open: "We breathe the same air here that Leontyne Price breathed in her student days."
After Ms. Price’s class, when the last applause had finally dissipated and we began to file out of the theater, there seemed to be a communal shift in our energy and, by extension, in how we were breathing. We felt full of inspiration, in both senses of the word: the intake of breath, the elevation of spirit. In just under four hours, Leontyne Price had reframed the details of our art-making (so earnestly studied, so finely wrought, so hard won) within the broader context of a courageous, generous approach to life. And with that, walking out onto Broadway and off into the autumn evening chill, we all breathed a little more deeply.
Leontyne Price’s farewell to the opera stage: her final Met performance as Aida in 1985.
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