rehwax.blogg.se

Whether she was known as “the girl with the golden voice ” or “the Stradivarius of singers, ” Price is, without question, one of the great operatic talents of all time. “You have to guard it with care, to let nothing disturb it, so you don ’t lose the bloom, don ’t let it fade, don ’t let the petals drop.

“The voice is so special, ” she told Opera News. For this, she became known in music circles as arrogant and “difficult, ” but for the fiercely independent Price it was a matter of survival to be selective. If the time was not right, or she didn ’t think she could handle a certain part, Price was known to reject the invitations of such great conductors as Herbert von Karajan, Rudolf Bing, or James Levine with the wave of a hand. But then Price ’s voice, her instrument, was so rare and special to her that she had taken great pains throughout her career to guard it from overuse, and to not destroy it performing roles that she thought she couldn ’t handle. After all, Price was 57 years old that evening, performing one of the most demanding roles in the repertoire, and yet her voice was as full as the day she first performed Aida in 1957 and literally set the standard for its perfection. Seldom has an artist received applause that was so genuine and so deserved. I will never receive that much love as long as I live, and I would be terribly selfish to expect that much ever again.

I have every vibration of that applause in my entire being until I die.

It ’s the most intense listening I ’ve ever done in my life. “That moment, I was a sponge, and I ’ll have all that moisture the rest of my life, ” Price told Robert Jacobson of Opera News. When Leontyne Price ’s angelic voice trailed off that night at New York ’s Lincoln Center in 1985, signaling the end of her final performance of the title role in Verdi ’s Aida -a role that has become synonymous with her name -the ensuing applause that embraced the great diva ’s farewell will forever echo, not only through the famed home of the Metropolitan Opera but through Price ’s heart as well.