Celebrations Today – February 10
Holidays and observances
- Christian feast day:
- Feast of St. Paul’s Shipwreck (Public holiday in Malta)
- Fenkil Day (Eritrea)
- National Memorial Day of the Exiles and Foibe (Italy) commemorates Italian Istrian and Dalmatian exiles and Foibe massacres (Italy, especially in Trieste)
Celebrations Today – USA: February 10
National Cream Cheese Brownie Day
National Home Warranty Day
National Umbrella Day
National Flannel Day
National Plimsoll Day
National Teddy Day
Today in US History: February 10
Leontyne Price
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), 44.
Portrait of Leontyne Price,
singing “La voyante of Sanguet,”
Carl Van Vechten, photographer,
May 19, 1953.
Creative Americans: Portraits by Carl 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 Carl 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 the College of Education and Industrial Arts (now Central State College) in Wilberforce, Ohio, Price attended The Juilliard School of Music (founded as the Institute of Musical Art and now known as The Juilliard School), an internationally known school of the performing arts 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 January 27, 1961. She performed there regularly, however, after her triumphant debut performance in Il Trovatore.
Price made other tours that included Australia and Argentina’s Teatro Colon in Buenos Aires in 1969. In the 1970s, she drastically cut the number of her opera performances, preferring to focus instead on her first love, recitals, in which she enjoyed the challenge of creating several characters on stage in succession. In 1985, Price gave her final performance at New York’s Lincoln Center in the title role of Verdi’s Aida; she was fifty-seven years old.
- 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 Welles 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, Price’s alma mater. Search the collection Architecture and Interior Design for 20th Century America: Photographs by Samuel Gottscho and William Schleisner, 1935-1955 on Juilliard to see more than 100 photographs of set design and costumes used in productions sponsored by this respected institution.
- View images of Laurel, Mississippi, the birthplace of Leontyne Price. Search the State and County Index of the American from the Great Depression to World War II: Photographs from the FSA and OWI, ca. 1935-1945.
- Search on Leontyne Price in the Prints & Photographs Online Catalog to find other images of this performer.
1Brian Lanker, I Dream a World: Portraits of Black Women Who Changed America. (New York: Stewart, Tabori & Chang, 1989), 44.
2ibid.
Today in History – February 10-External Links
Today’s Weather in History
Today in Earthquake History
This Day in Naval History
Today’s Document from the National Archives
Today’s Events, Births & Deaths –Wikipedia
Today in History by AP
On this Day -1950 to 2005 – Today’s Story–BBC
On This Day: The New York Times
This Day in History –History.com
Today in Canadian History – Canada Channel
History of Britain that took place On This Day
Russia in History –Russiapedia