Leontyne Price

CTL-E-6267 · Person · musician · 1927–present; performing career 1952–1997

VERIFIED evidence grade — build store (JSON graph)

Combined Graph record U-07457 · provenance: build store (JSON graph), record CTL-E-6267.

Leontyne Price is an American lyric soprano, the first African American singer to achieve an international reputation in opera. Born February 10, 1927, in Laurel, Mississippi, she sang in her church choir as a girl, graduated from the College of Education and Industrial Arts in Wilberforce, Ohio, in 1948, and studied for four years at the Juilliard School in New York under Florence Page Kimball. She made her debut in April 1952 in a Broadway revival of Virgil Thomson's Four Saints in Three Acts, then sang Bess in the 1952 to 1954 production and tour of Porgy and Bess. In 1955 she became the first African American to sing an opera role on television, in NBC's Tosca. Her operatic stage debut came in San Francisco in 1957, followed by appearances in Vienna in 1959 and at La Scala in Milan in 1960. She debuted at the Metropolitan Opera in January 1961 as Leonora in Il Trovatore and became one of the Met's leading sopranos. Samuel Barber wrote Antony and Cleopatra for her, and she premiered it at the opening of the Met's new Lincoln Center house in 1966. She gave her farewell Aïda at the Met in 1985 and continued recitals until 1997.

The record

• Also known as: Mary Violet Leontine Price, Mary Violet Leontyne Price

Notes

Staged 2026-10-16 under CTL-GOV-006 (Scan Tail Wave 7 — 747 Program, FINAL Wave 13; seventh Scan Tail packet at the founder's 40-record size). Gate A (2026-10-16): Gate A CLEAR (hand-checked 2026-10-16): no Leontyne Price entity, alias, or variant in the live graph (3,910 entities). ID CTL-E-6267 free at staging. Supply: 747 Supply Ledger — Tier 4 corpus scan tail, corpus-gap-candidates-2026-10-15.json ranked #2874. The scan supplied the name string only; every fact is sourced under CTL-GOV-004. SCOPE GATE: Black American soprano whose Metropolitan Opera career broke the color line at the summit of classical music; a central figure in Black classical performance history. Vital status: LIVING — Britannica (accessed 2026-10-16) treats her in the present tense as a living artist; the Mississippi Encyclopedia (accessed 2026-10-16) records her 2017 New York Times interview ('she still sings every day') and no death is reported in any opened source. Born February 10, 1927, she is 99 at staging. STATISTICS — GRAMMY COUNT CONFLICT SHOWN, NOT BLENDED: Britannica (accessed 2026-10-16) says 'more than 20 Grammy Awards, including a lifetime achievement award (1989)'; other reference accounts give lower competitive-win counts (13 wins plus the Lifetime Achievement Award). No total is asserted in the description. Honors, dated (Britannica; Mississippi Encyclopedia): Presidential Medal of Freedom 1964; Kennedy Center Honors 1980; National Medal of Arts 1985; Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award 1989; NEA Opera Honors 2008. Ovation length at her 1961 Met debut: the Mississippi Encyclopedia says forty-two minutes; other accounts say thirty-five — the description asserts neither. La Scala: the Mississippi Encyclopedia frames a first-lead-role barrier at La Scala; Britannica places her La Scala appearance in May 1960 without that framing — shown, not blended. MEDIA: photo HELD (candidate: The 1981 portrait of Price carried on her Wikipedia reference page — named candidate only; NO license is claimed — PHOTO-001 verification deferred); chart FILLED (charts/chart-ctl-e-6267-leontyne-price.svg, CTL graphic from this record's sourced facts); video HELD (No matching-entity CTL Short in the Shorts Link Map (shorts-link-map-2026-10-15.json, 233 rows, checked by name and variants, 2026-10-16); no near-miss title found.); audio HELD (no rights-cleared matching-entity audio staged); map N/A (Person records carry no map slot.) MEDIA LAYER (staged 2026-10-16; full per-asset PHOTO-001 records + embed specs in the packet's staged JSON, Drive packet folder): map = N/A (Person records carry no map slot.) | visual_assets = HELD: | chart = FILLED (Created for this packet (CTL graphic, CTL-PHOTO-001 lane) from the record's sourced facts.) | video = HELD (No matching-entity CTL Short in the Shorts Link Map (shorts-link-map-2026-10-15.json, 233 rows, checked by nam) | audio = HELD (HELD: No CTL-owned or rights-cleared matching-entity audio exists at staging.)

Sources

• Encyclopaedia Britannica, Leontyne Price (accessed 2026-10-16) — born February 10, 1927, Laurel, Mississippi; American lyric soprano, first African American singer to achieve an international reputation in opera; graduated College of Education and Industrial Arts, Wilberforce, Ohio, 1948; four years at Juilliard under Florence Page Kimball; debut April 1952 in Four Saints in Three Acts; Bess in Porgy and Bess 1952-1954; Tosca on NBC television 1955; operatic stage debut San Francisco 1957; Vienna 1959, La Scala May 1960; Metropolitan Opera debut January 1961 as Leonora in Il Trovatore; farewell Aida at the Met 1985; more than 20 Grammy Awards including a lifetime achievement award (1989) per this source; Presidential Medal of Freedom (1964), Kennedy Center Honor (1980), National Medal of the Arts (1985); NEA Opera Honoree 2008 — https://www.britannica.com/biography/Leontyne-Price?ref=abelson.ie (build store)
• Mississippi Encyclopedia (Center for Study of Southern Culture, University of Mississippi), Leontyne Price (accessed 2026-10-16) — Mary Violet Leontyne Price born 10 February 1927 in Laurel, Mississippi; bachelor's degree 1948 from Wilberforce College (now Central State University); Juilliard; professional opera debut in Four Saints in Three Acts (1952); Bess in the 1952-54 Porgy and Bess tour; first African American to sing an opera role on television (Tosca, NBC, 1955); first African American to sing a lead role at La Scala per this source; Metropolitan Opera debut 1961 as Leonora, followed by a forty-two-minute standing ovation per this source; Barber wrote Antony and Cleopatra for her, premiered at the Met's new Lincoln Center house in 1966; farewell operatic performance at the Met 1985; last recital November 19, 1997; performed at a Carnegie Hall memorial concert in October 2001; in 2017 she told the New York Times she still sings every day — https://mississippiencyclopedia.org/entries/leontyne-price/ (primary source · build store)

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