| Network name | Canadian Broadcasting Corporation Société Radio-Canada |
|---|---|
| Network logo | | |
| Country | Canada |
| Network type | Broadcast radio network Television network Online |
| Available | National; available on terrestrial and cable systems in American border communities; available internationally via shortwave, Internet and Sirius Satellite Radio |
| Owner | Queen in Right of Canada (Crown Corporation) |
| Key people | Hubert T. Lacroix, president Richard Stursberg, Executive Vice President, English Networks |
| Launch date | November 2, 1936 (radio) September 6, 1952 (television) |
| Website | www.cbc.radio-canada.ca www.cbc.ca www.radio-canada.ca |
in Vancouver.]] The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, commonly known as the CBC, is a Canadian crown corporation that serves as the national public radio and television broadcaster. In French, it is called la Société Radio-Canada (Radio-Canada or SRC). The umbrella corporate brand is CBC/Radio-Canada.
Although some local stations in Canada predate CBC's founding, CBC is the oldest existing broadcasting network in Canada, first established in its present form on November 2, 1936. Radio services include CBC Radio One, CBC Radio 2, Première Chaîne, Espace musique and the international radio service Radio Canada International. Television operations include CBC Television, Télévision de Radio-Canada, CBC News Network, le Réseau de l'information, ARTV (part ownership), Documentary and Bold. The CBC operates services for the Canadian Arctic under the names CBC North and Radio Nord Québec. The CBC also operates digital audio service Galaxie and two main websites, one in each official language; it owns 40% of satellite radio broadcaster Sirius Canada, which airs additional CBC services including CBC Radio 3 and Bande à part.
CBC/Radio-Canada offers programming in English, French and eight Aboriginal languages on its domestic radio service; in nine languages on its international radio service, Radio Canada International; and in eight languages on its Web-based radio service RCI Viva, a service for recent and aspiring immigrants to Canada.
The financial structure and the nature of the CBC often place it in the same category as other high-end national broadcasters, such as the British broadcaster BBC, although unlike the BBC (and more like RTE), the CBC employs commercial advertising to supplement its federal funding on its television broadcasts. The radio service employed commercials from its inception to 1974. Since then, its radio service, like the BBC, has been commercial-free.
The CRBC took over a network of radio stations formerly set up by a federal Crown corporation, the Canadian National Railway. The network was used to broadcast programming to riders aboard its passenger trains, with coverage primarily in central and eastern Canada. On November 2, 1936, the CRBC became a full Crown corporation and gained its present name. Leonard Brockington was the CBC’s first chairman.
For the next few decades, the CBC was responsible for all broadcasting innovation in Canada. It introduced FM radio to Canada in 1946. Television broadcasts from the CBC began on September 6, 1952, with the opening of a station in Montreal, Quebec (CBFT), and a station in Toronto, Ontario (CBLT) opening two days later. The CBC’s first privately owned affiliate television station, CKSO in Sudbury, Ontario, launched in October 1953. (At the time, all private stations were expected to affiliate with the CBC, a condition that relaxed in 1960–61 with the launch of CTV.)
From 1944 to 1962 the CBC operated two English-language AM radio services known as the Trans-Canada Network and the Dominion Network. The latter, carrying lighter programs including American radio shows, was dissolved in 1962, while the former became known as CBC Radio. (In the late 1990s, CBC Radio was rebranded as CBC Radio One and CBC Stereo as CBC Radio Two. The latter was re-branded slightly in 2007 as CBC Radio 2.)
On July 1, 1958, CBC’s television signal was extended from coast to coast. The first Canadian telvision show shot in colour was the CBC’s own The Forest Rangers in 1963. However, colour television broadcasts did not begin until July 1, 1966, and full-colour service began in 1974. In 1978, CBC became the first broadcaster in the world to use an orbiting satellite for television service, linking Canada “from east to west to north.”
The first FCP station was started in Yellowknife in 1967, the second in Whitehorse in 1968. Additional stations were added from 1969 to 1972. Most stations were fitted for the Anik satellite signal during 1973, carrying 12 hours of colour programming. Broadcasts were geared to either the Atlantic time zone (UTC−4 or −3) or the Pacific time zone (UTC−8 or −7) even though the audience resided in communities in time zones varying from UTC−5 to UTC−8.
Some of these stations used non-CBC callsigns such as CFWH-TV in Whitehorse, while some others used the standard CB_T callsign.
It would be many years before television programs originated in the north without the help of the west, starting with one half-hour per week in the 1980s with Focus North and graduating to a daily half-hour newscast, Northbeat, in the late 1990s.
When the creation of the CBC “gem” logo was in its planning stages in 1974, designer Burton Kramer put together an early version of the network’s ID. In it, the C part of the logo zoomed away from the viewer toward the centre of the screen, followed by the other parts of the logo in similar fashion until the complete logo formed on a black background, with the name “Television Canada” (possibly a planned change of name for the CBC’s television units at the time) appearing beneath it.
Although that version of the network ID was not used, the well-known version of the ID (with the logo kaleidoscopically morphing into its form while radiating outward from the centre of the screen on a blue background) made its television debut on the CBC’s English and French networks in December 1974. Some refer to this animated version as “The Exploding Pizza.” The jingle initially used for the ID was a three-note synthesized jingle with an announcer saying “This is CBC” or «Ici Radio-Canada» at the end of the ID, but that short-lived jingle was replaced around 1976 by the more well-known eleven-note jingle, which lasted until December 31, 1985.
The updated one-colour version of the gem logo was introduced on January 1, 1986, and with it was introduced a new series of computer graphic-generated television idents for CBC and Radio-Canada. These idents consisted of different background colours corresponding to the time of day behind a translucent CBC gem logo, accompanied by different arrangements of the CBC’s new, orchestrated five-note jingle. When the CBC logo was updated to its current form in 1992, new television idents were introduced in November that year, also using CG.
A popular satirical nickname for the CBC, commonly used in the pages of Frank, is “the Corpse.”
There is an urban legend that a CBC announcer once referred to the network on the air as the “Canadian Broadcorping Castration,” which also sometimes remains in use as a satirical nickname. Quotations of the supposed spoonerism are wildly variable in detail on what was said, when it was said or even who the announcer was, but there is no evidence to confirm the truth of the story. The only known recording of this phrase being spoken was created by American radio producer Kermit Schaefer for one of his best-selling Pardon My Blooper record albums in the 1950s, and is not in fact a real recording of a CBC broadcast.
Some have referred to the CBC as the “Corporate Broadcasting Corporation” for an alleged free market bias, though the CBC is largely publicly funded.
The CBC has also been mistakenly referred to as the Canadian Broadcasting Company.
...the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, as the national public broadcaster, should provide radio and television services incorporating a wide range of programming that informs, enlightens and entertains;...the programming provided by the Corporation should:
* be predominantly and distinctively Canadian,
reflect Canada and its regions to national and regional audiences, while serving the special needs of those regions, actively contribute to the flow and exchange of cultural expression, be in English and in French, reflecting the different needs and circumstances of each official language community, including the particular needs and circumstances of English and French linguistic minorities, strive to be of equivalent quality in English and French, contribute to shared national consciousness and identity, be made available throughout Canada by the most appropriate and efficient means and as resources become available for the purpose, and reflect the multicultural and multiracial nature of Canada.
* Timothy Casgrain – Chair, Board of Directors; Toronto, Ontario.
CBC’s funding differs from that of the public broadcasters of many European nations, which collect a licence fee, or those in the United States, such as PBS and NPR, which receive some public funding but rely to a large extent on voluntary contributions from individual viewers and listeners.
To supplement this funding, the CBC’s television networks and websites sell advertising, while cable/satellite-only services such as Newsworld additionally collect subscriber fees, in line with their privately owned counterparts. CBC’s radio services do not sell advertising except when required by law (for example, to political parties during federal elections).
For the fiscal year 2006, the CBC received a total of $1.53 billion from all revenue sources. Expenditures for the year included $616 million for English television, $402 million for French television, $126 million for specialty channels, a total of $348 million for radio services in both languages, $88 million for management and technical costs, and $124 million for “amortization of property and equipment.” Some of this spending was derived from amortization of funding from previous years.
The network’s defenders note that the CBC’s mandate differs from private media’s, particularly in its focus on Canadian content; that much of the public funding actually goes to the radio networks; and that the CBC is responsible for the full cost of most of its prime-time programming, while private networks can fill up most of their prime-time schedules with American series acquired for a fraction of their production cost. CBC supporters also claim that additional, long-term funding is required to provide better Canadian dramas and improved local programming.
The $616 million budget for CBC Television is in fact smaller than, for example, the $656 million in revenues earned by private broadcaster CanWest Global for its various television operations in fiscal 2006, which trailed rival CTV’s ratings by a wide margin.
Although the CBC has a similar remit to that of the BBC, and therefore has a unique national responsibility to advance Canadian culture without commercial objects, the CBC's budget is a fraction the size of the BBC's budget. The BBC received about £3.1 billion in licence fees during 2007/8 compared to the $946 million the CBC received from the public purse and which was split between French language and English language services.
CBC Radio also operates two shortwave services. One, Radio Nord Québec, broadcasts domestically to Northern Quebec on a static frequency of 9625 kHz, and the other, Radio Canada International, provides broadcasts to the United States and around the world in eight languages. Additionally, the Radio One stations in St. John’s and Vancouver operate shortwave relay transmitters, broadcasting at 6160 kHz. Some have suggested that CBC/Radio-Canada create a new high-power shortwave digital radio service for more effective coverage of isolated areas.
In November, 2004, the CBC, in partnership with Standard Broadcasting and Sirius Satellite Radio, applied to the CRTC for a license to introduce satellite radio service to Canada. The CRTC approved the subscription radio application, as well as two others for satellite radio service, on June 16, 2005. Sirius Canada launched on December 1, 2005, with a number of CBC Radio channels, including the new services CBC Radio 3 and Bande à part.
In some areas, especially national or provincial parks, the CBC also operates an AM or FM transmitter rebroadcasting weather alerts from the Meteorological Service of Canada’s Weatheradio Canada service.
Some stations that broadcast from smaller cities are private affiliates of the CBC, that is, stations which are owned by commercial broadcasters and air a predominantly CBC schedule. However, most affiliates of the English network opt out of some network programs to air local programming or more popular foreign programs acquired from other broadcasters. Private affiliates of the French network, all of which are located in Quebec, rarely have the means to provide alternate programming. Such private affiliates are becoming increasingly rare, and there have been indications that the CBC plans to discontinue all affiliation agreements with non-CBC owned television stations in the 2010s.
CBC television stations in Nunavut, the Northwest Territories and Yukon tailor their programming mostly to the local native population, and broadcast in many native languages, such as Inuktitut, Gwichʼin, and Dene.
One of the most popular shows is the weekly Saturday night broadcast of NHL hockey games. In English, the program is known as Hockey Night in Canada, and in French, it was called La Soirée du hockey. Both shows began in 1952. The French edition was discontinued in 2004, though Radio-Canada stations outside of Quebec simulcast some Saturday night games produced by RDS until 2006. The network suffered considerable public embarrassment when it lost the rights to the show's theme music following a protracted lawsuit launched by the song's composer and publishers.
Ratings for CBC Television have declined in recent years. In Quebec, where the majority speaks French, la Télévision de Radio-Canada is popular and garners some of the highest ratings in the province.
Both terrestrial networks have also begun to roll out high-definition television feeds, with selected NHL and CFL games produced in HD for the English network.
The CBC also operates three specialty television channels – CBC News Network, an English-language news channel; RDI, a French-language news channel; and Bold, a Category 1 digital service. It owns a managing interest in the Francophone arts service ARTV, and (82%) of the digital channel, Documentary
CBC Records is a Canadian record label which distributes CBC programming, including live concert performances and album transcripts of news and information programming such as the Massey Lectures, in album format. Music albums on the label, predominantly in the classical and jazz genres, are distributed across Canada in commercial record stores, while albums containing spoken word programming are predominantly distributed by the CBC's own retail merchandising operations.
* Canadian Media Guild (CMG) represents on-air, production, technical, administrative and support staff outside of Quebec and Moncton.
On August 15, 2005, 5,500 employees of the CBC (about 90%) were locked out by CBC CEO Robert Rabinovitch in a dispute over future hiring practices. At issue were the rules governing the hiring of contract workers in preference to full time hires. The locked-out employees were members of the Canadian Media Guild, representing all production, journalistic and on-air personnel outside Quebec and Moncton, including several foreign correspondents. While CBC services continued during the lockout, they were primarily made up of repeats, with news programming from the BBC and newswires. Major CBC programs such as The National and Royal Canadian Air Farce were not produced during the lockout; some non-CBC-owned programs seen on the network, such as The Red Green Show, shifted to other studios. Meanwhile, the locked-out employees produced podcasts and websites such as CBCunplugged.com, which many credited with swaying public opinion to the union’s side.
After a hiatus, talks re-opened. In addition, the Canadian public was becoming irritated with the loss of quality of their publicly funded service. On September 23, the federal minister of labour called Robert Rabinovitch and Arnold Amber (the president of the CBC branch of the Canadian Media Guild) to his office for talks aimed at ending the dispute.
Late in the evening of October 2, 2005, it was announced that the CBC management and staff had reached a tentative deal which resulted in the CBC returning to normal operations on October 11. Some speculated that the looming October 8 start date for the network’s most important television property, Hockey Night in Canada, had acted as an additional incentive to resolve the dispute.
The CBC has been affected by a number of other labour disputes since the late 1990s:
* In early 1999, CBC English- and French-network technicians in all locations outside Quebec and Moncton, members of the Communications, Energy and Paperworkers Union of Canada, went on strike. The Canadian Media Guild was set to strike as well, but the CBC settled with both unions.
* A similar dispute, again involving all technicians outside Quebec and Moncton, occurred in late 2001 and concluded by the end of the year.
* In spring 2002, on-air staff in Quebec and Moncton (again, on both English and French networks) were locked out by local management, leaving, among other things, NHL playoff games without commentary on French television.
While all labour disputes resulted in cut-back programming and numerous repeat airings, the 2005 lockout may have been the most damaging to CBC. All local programming in the affected regions was cancelled and replaced by abbreviated national newscasts and national radio morning shows. BBC World (television) and World Service (radio) and Broadcast News feeds were used to provide the remainder of original news content, and the CBC website consisted mainly of rewritten wire copy. Some BBC staff protested against their material being used during the CBC lockout. “The NUJ and BECTU will not tolerate their members’ work being used against colleagues in Canada,” said a joint statement by BBC unions. The CMG questioned whether, with its limited Canadian news content, the CBC was meeting its legal requirements under the Broadcasting Act and its CRTC licences.
Galaxie supplied some music content for the radio networks. Tapes of previously-aired or produced documentaries, interviews and entertainment programs were also aired widely. Selected television sports coverage, including that of the Canadian Football League, continued, but without commentary.
As before, French-language staff outside of Quebec were also affected by the 2005 lockout, although with Quebec producing the bulk of the French networks’ programming, those networks were not as visibly affected by the dispute apart from local programs.
In English-speaking Canada, the decline in CBC viewership can be partly attributed to the fact that private television networks primarily rebroadcast popular American programming with substituted Canadian advertising. American programs appear to attract higher audiences than do much of the made-in-Canada programming that is a CBC specialty.
Viewership on the CBC’s French television network has also declined, mostly because of stiff competition from private French-language networks. Audience fragmentation is another issue; French Canadians prefer home-grown television programming, a vibrant Quebec star system is in place, and little American or foreign content airs on French-language networks, public or private. On the other hand, the CBC’s French-language radio channel is sometimes the top-rated network.
In the case of breaking news, including federal elections, the CBC may still hold a slight edge. For instance, after election night 2006, CBC Television took out full-page newspaper ads claiming that 2.2 million Canadians watched their coverage, more than any other broadcaster. However, in similar ads, CTV also claimed to be number one, stating there was a CBC audience of only 1.2 million. In both cases, the methodologies were not clear from the ads, such as whether simulcasts on one or both of the networks’ news channels (Newsworld for CBC, Newsnet for CTV) were counted.
The CBC was the only television network broadcasting in Canada until the creation of ITO, a short-lived predecessor of today’s CTV, in 1960; even then, large parts of Canada did not receive CTV service until the late 1960s or early 1970s. The CBC also had the only national radio network. Its cultural impact was therefore significant since many Canadians had little or no choice for their information and entertainment other than from these two powerful media.
Even after the advent of commercial television and radio, the CBC has remained one of the main elements in Canadian popular culture through its obligation to produce Canadian television and radio programming. The CBC has made programs for mass audiences and for smaller audiences interested in drama, performance arts, documentaries, current affairs, entertainment and sport.
The 1950s saw the CBC providing hands-on training and employment for actors, writers, and directors in the developing field of its television dramatic services, and later saw much of the talent heading south to seek fame and fortune in New York and Hollywood.
Competition from private broadcasters like CTV, Global, and other broadcast television stations and specialty channels has lessened the CBC’s reach, but nevertheless it remains a major influence on Canadian popular culture. According to the corporation’s research, 92% of Canadians consider the CBC an essential service.
# Newsworld International (NWI), an American cable channel that rebroadcast much of the programming of CBC Newsworld (now known as CBC News Network). # Trio, an arts and entertainment channel.
In 2000, CBC and Power Broadcasting sold these channels to Barry Diller’s USA Networks. Diller’s company was later acquired by Vivendi Universal, which in turn was partially acquired by NBC to form NBC Universal. NBC Universal still owns the Trio brand, which no longer has any association with the CBC (and, as of the end of 2005, became an Internet-only broadband channel).
However, the CBC continued to program NWI, with much of its programming simulcast on the domestic Newsworld service. In late 2004, as a result of a further change in NWI’s ownership to the INdTV consortium (including Joel Hyatt and former Vice-President of the United States Al Gore), NWI ceased airing CBC programming on August 1, 2005, when it was renamed Current TV.
Some CBC programming is also rebroadcast on local radio, such as New Hampshire Public Radio. CBC television channels are available on cable systems located near the Canadian border. For example, CBET Windsor is available on cable systems in the Detroit, Michigan, and Toledo, Ohio, areas. CBUT is broadcast on Comcast in the Seattle, Washington, area.
At night, the AM radio transmissions of both CBC and SRC services can be received over much of the northern portion of the United States, from stations such as CBE in Windsor, CBW in Winnipeg and CBK in Saskatchewan.
C-SPAN has also carried CBC’s coverage of major events affecting Canadians, including:
Several PBS stations also air some CBC programming, especially The Red Green Show. However, these programs are syndicated by independent distributors and are not governed by the PBS “common carriage” policy.
Other American broadcast networks sometimes air CBC reports, especially for Canadian events of international significance. For example, in the early hours after the Swissair Flight 111 disaster, CNN aired CBC’s live coverage of the event. Also in the late 1990s, CNN Headline News aired a few CBC reports of events that were not significant outside Canada.
With the launch of Sirius Canada in December 2005, some of the CBC’s radio networks (including Radio Canada International and Sirius-exclusive Radio Three and Bande à part channels) are available to Sirius subscribers in the United States.
* Bahamas, on the CoralWave (Cable Bahamas) television system in the Northern Bahamas (Channel 8).
In 1997, Henry Vlug, a deaf lawyer in Vancouver, filed a complaint with the Canadian Human Rights Commission alleging that an absence of captioning on some programming on CBC Television and Newsworld infringed on his rights as a person with a disability. A ruling in 2000 by the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal, which later heard the case, sided with Vlug and found that an absence of captioning constituted discrimination on the basis of disability. The Tribunal ordered CBC Television and Newsworld to caption the entirety of their broadcast days, “including television shows, commercials, promos and unscheduled news flashes, from sign-on until sign-off.”
The ruling recognized that “there will inevitably be glitches with respect to the delivery of captioning” but that “the rule should be full captioning.” In a negotiated settlement to avoid appealing the ruling to the Federal Court of Canada, CBC agreed to commence 100% captioning on CBC Television and Newsworld beginning November 1, 2002. CBC Television and Newsworld are apparently the only broadcasters in the world required to caption the entire broadcast day. However, published evidence asserts that CBC is not providing the 100% captioning ordered by the Tribunal.
In 2004, retired Canadian Senator Jean-Robert Gauthier, a hard-of-hearing person, filed a complaint with the Canadian Human Rights Commission against Radio-Canada concerning captioning, particularly the absence of real-time captioning on newscasts and other live programming. As part of the settlement process, Radio-Canada agreed to submit a report on the state of captioning, especially real-time captioning, on Radio-Canada and RDI. The report, which was the subject of some criticism, proposed an arrangement with Cité Collégiale, a community college in Ottawa, to train more French-language real-time captioners.
English-language specialty networks owned or co-owned by CBC, including Bold and Documentary, have the lower captioning requirements typical of larger Canadian broadcasters (90% of the broadcast day by the end of both networks’ licence terms). ARTV, the French-language specialty network co-owned by CBC, has a maximum captioning requirement of 53%.
* Category:Canadian podcasters Category:Canadian federal Crown corporations Category:Department of Canadian Heritage Category:Companies based in Ottawa Category:Publicly funded broadcasters Category:Government agencies established in 1936
This text is licensed under the Creative Commons CC-BY-SA License. This text was originally published on Wikipedia and was developed by the Wikipedia community.
| Name | Sugar Sammy |
|---|---|
| Birth name | Samir Khullar |
| Birth place | Montreal, Quebec, Canada. |
| Genre | Observational comedy, Improvisational comedy |
| Subject | Race, Sex, Pop Culture |
| Influences | Dave Chappelle, Eddie Murphy, Chris Rock, Don Rickles |
| Rowspan | "8" | 2009 |
| Rowspan | "7" | 2010 |
| Name | Sammy, Sugar |
| Place of birth | Montreal, Quebec, Canada. |
This text is licensed under the Creative Commons CC-BY-SA License. This text was originally published on Wikipedia and was developed by the Wikipedia community.
Mary Violet Leontyne Price (born February 10, 1927) is an American soprano. Born and raised in the segregated Deep South, she rose to international fame during a period of racial change in the 1950s and 60s, and was the first African-American to become a leading prima donna at the Metropolitan Opera.
Price's voice was noted for its brilliant upper register, "smoky" middle and lower registers, flowing phrasing, and wide dynamic range. A lirico spinto (Italian for "pushed lyric", or middleweight), she was well suited to the roles of Giuseppe Verdi and Giacomo Puccini, as well as several in operas by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Her voice ranged from A flat below Middle C to the E above High C. (She said she reached high Fs "in the shower.")
After her retirement from the opera stage in 1985, she continued to appear in recitals and orchestral concerts for another 12 years.
Among her many honors are the Presidential Medal of Freedom (1964), the Kennedy Center Honors (1980), the National Medal of Arts (1985), numerous honorary degrees, and nineteen Grammy Awards, including a special Lifetime Achievement Award in 1989, more than any other classical singer. In October 2008, she was one of the recipients of the first Opera Honors given by the National Endowment for the Arts.
In her teen years, Leontyne accompanied the "second choir" at St. Paul's Methodist Church while singing and playing for the chorus at the black high school. Meanwhile, she often visited the home of Alexander and Elizabeth Chisholm, an affluent white family for whom Leontyne's aunt worked as a laundress. Mrs. Chisholm encouraged the girl's early piano playing, and later noticed her extraordinary singing voice.
Aiming for a teaching career, Price enrolled in the music education program at the all-black Wilberforce College in Wilberforce, Ohio. (This institution split in her junior year and she graduated from the publicly funded half, Central State College.) Her success in the glee club led to solo assignments, and she was encouraged to complete her studies in voice. She sang in the choir with another soon-to-be-famous singer, Betty Allen. With the help of the Chisholms and the famous bass Paul Robeson, who put on a benefit concert for her, she enrolled on a scholarship at the Juilliard School in New York City, where she studied with Florence Page Kimball.
Her first important stage performance was as Mistress Ford in a 1952 student production of Verdi's Falstaff. Shortly thereafter, Virgil Thomson hired her for the revival of his all-black opera, Four Saints in Three Acts. After a two-week Broadway run, Saints went to Paris. Meanwhile, she had been cast as Bess in the Blevins Davis/Robert Breen revival of George Gershwin's Porgy and Bess, and returned for the opening of the national tour at the Dallas State Fair, on June 9, 1952. The tour visited Chicago, Pittsburgh, and Washington, D.C, and then went on a tour of Europe, sponsored by the U.S. State Department. After appearing in Vienna, Berlin, London, and Paris, the company returned to New York when Broadway's Ziegfeld Theater became available.
On the eve of the European tour, Price married the noted bass-baritone William Warfield, who was singing Porgy in the Davis-Breen production, in a widely covered ceremony at the Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem, with many in the cast in attendance. In his memoir, My Music and My Life, Warfield describes how their careers forced them apart. They were legally separated in 1967, and divorced in 1973. They had no children.
At first, Price planned on a recital career, modeling herself after contralto Marian Anderson, tenor Roland Hayes, Warfield, and other great black concert singers. Occasionally granted leaves from "Porgy," she began championing new songs and song cycles by American composers, including Lou Harrison, John La Montaine, and Samuel Barber.
However, her Bess proved she had the instincts and the voice for the operatic stage, and the Met itself affirmed this by inviting her to sing "Summertime" at a "Met Jamboree" fund-raiser on April 6, 1953, at the Ritz Theater on Broadway. Price was therefore the first African American to sing with the Met, if not at the Met. That distinction went to Marian Anderson, who, on January 7, 1955, sang Ulrica in Verdi's Un ballo in maschera.
That spring, Andre Mertens, her agent at Columbia Artists, arranged an audition for the Austrian conductor Herbert von Karajan, then touring with the Berlin Philharmonic. Karajan, impressed, declared her "an artist of the future" and invited her to sing Salome under his baton at La Scala. (On the advice of Miss Kimball and Mertens, she declined.) In 1956 and 1957, Price made recital tours across the U.S. and in India and Australia, sponsored by the U.S. State Department.
Her professional operatic stage debut took place in San Francisco on September 20, 1957, as Madame Lidoine in the U.S. premiere of Francis Poulenc's Dialogues des Carmélites. A few weeks later, when the Italian soprano Antonietta Stella fell ill with appendicitis, Price stepped in and sang her first Aida on stage. The following May, she accepted Karajan's invitation to make her European debut at the Vienna Staatsoper on May 24, 1958, as Aida. The next year, she returned to Vienna, singing Aida and Pamina in Die Zauberflöte.
Over the next decade, von Karajan conducted Price in many of her greatest performances, in the opera house (Mozart's Don Giovanni, Verdi's Il trovatore and Puccini's Tosca), in the concert hall (Bach's B-minor Mass, Beethoven's Missa Solemnis, Bruckner's Te Deum, and the Requiems of Verdi and Mozart), and in the recording studio (complete recordings of Tosca and Carmen, and a bestselling holiday music album A Christmas Offering--all are available on CD).
In 1958, Price made debuts at London's Royal Opera House, Covent Garden (again to replace an indisposed prima donna, Anita Cerquetti), and the Arena di Verona, both in Aida. On May 21, 1960, she made her first appearance at La Scala, again as Aida. (This is sometimes said to be the first appearance by an African American singer in a leading role with Italy's leading company. In fact, Gloria Davy had sung Aida there in 1958, and Mattiwilda Dobbs had sung Elvira, the secondary lead soprano role in Rossini's ''L'italiana in Algeri".)
A year later, after Bing heard her perform in Il Trovatore at Verona, in a performance with tenor Franco Corelli, he made a much improved offer, this time for several roles, and in January 1961 she made a historic double-debut with Corelli in Trovatore. The ovation at the final curtain lasted at least 35 minutes—and was certainly one of the longest in Met history. (Price claimed her friends had timed it at 42 minutes, and that is the figure used in much of her publicity.) Leontyne Price received the lion's share of the reviewers' praise, and Corelli told Bing the next morning that he did not want to sing with that soprano again, a decision he rescinded.
New York Times critic Harold Schonberg wrote that Price's "voice, warm and luscious, has enough volume to fill the house with ease, and she has a good technique to back up the voice itself. She even took the trills as written, and nothing in the part as Verdi wrote it gave her the least bit of trouble. She moves well and is a competent actress. But no soprano makes a career of acting. Voice is what counts, and voice is what Miss Price has."
In the next few weeks, she added four other role debuts at the Met: Aïda, Cio-Cio-San in Madama Butterfly, Donna Anna in Don Giovanni, and Liu in Turandot. Time magazine noted this extraordinary run of in a cover story, and music critics named her "Musician of the Year."
Leontyne Price was the fifth African American to sing leading roles at the Met. However, Price was the first African American to sing multiple leading roles, and the first to earn the Met's top fee. By 1964, according to the Met archives, Leontyne Price was paid $2,750 per performance, on a par with Joan Sutherland, Maria Callas and Renata Tebaldi. The only singer who earned more was Birgit Nilsson, who had Wagner more or less to herself, at $3,000 a performance.
In September 1961, Price opened the Met season as Minnie in La fanciulla del West, a sign of her arrival as a Met prima donna. She was the first African American to be invited to open a season. A musicians' strike had threatened to abort the season, but President Kennedy, aware of the event's political importance, sent Secretary of Labor Arthur Goldberg to mediate a settlement, and the Met opened on time.
Her first serious vocal crisis followed. Midway into the second performance of "Fanciulla," Price lost her singing voice and had to shout her lines to the end of the scene. A standby, soprano Dorothy Kirsten, was called to sing the third Act. The newspapers reported that Price had a virus, but Price later said the crisis was as much the result of the psychological pressure of having too much success, too fast. After a "Butterfly" in December, she canceled other appearances and left for a three-month respite in Rome. The following spring, she returned to the Met for a successful performance of her first Tosca in an opera house. (She repeated the role in San Francisco, Philadelphia, and Vienna, as well as on tour with the Met in Detroit and St. Louis.)
Over the next decade, Price added seven additional roles at the Met (in chronological order): Elvira in Verdi's Ernani, Pamina in Mozart's Die Zauberflöte, Fiordiligi in Mozart's Così fan tutte, Tatyana in Tchaikovsky's Eugene Onegin, Cleopatra in Barber's Antony and Cleopatra, Amelia in Un ballo in maschera, and Leonora in La forza del destino. She was considered most suitable to Verdi's "middle period" heroines, with their high, glowing lines and postures of noble grief and prayerful supplication. She also was the leading exponent of the plaintive soprano part in Verdi's Requiem.
The opera was not a success. Many blamed director Franco Zeffirelli for burying the music under heavy costumes and huge scenery. Others said Bing had underestimated the challenge posted by a new high-tech house. (The expensive new turntable broke down at the dress rehearsal leaving Price trapped briefly inside a pyramid.) Still others complained that Barber's score lacked satisfying set pieces and that it was insufficiently modern. The run was cut short and the opera was never revived at the Met. With the help of Gian Carlo Menotti, Barber later reworked the score for successful productions at the Juilliard School and the Spoleto Festival in Charleston. Barber also prepared a concert suite, combining Cleopatra's two arias, which Price premiered in Washington in 1968 and sang often.
In 1977, Price took on her last new role, Strauss' Ariadne, in San Francisco, to enthusiastic reviews. When she brought the role to the Met in 1979, she did less well. She was suffering from a viral infection and had to cancel all but two of eight scheduled performances. Reviewing her first performance, the New York Times critic was not complimentary.
A late triumph occurred in 1981 in San Francisco, when she was asked to step in at the last minute for soprano Margaret Price as Aida, a role she had relinquished from her repertory. San Francisco Chronicle columnist Herbert Caen reported that she had insisted on being paid $1 more than the tenor, Luciano Pavarotti. This would have made her, for the moment, the highest-paid opera singer in the world. The opera house denied this.
After final revisits in her most famous roles—in San Francisco, Forza, Carmélites, Il Trovatore, and more Aidas, and, at the Met, Forza and Il Trovatore--Price gave her operatic farewell at the Met on January 3, 1985, in Aida. The performance was broadcast on PBS. After taking "an act or two to warm up", wrote Times' critic Donal Henahan, she produced "pearls beyond price." Her performance of the Act III aria, "O patria mia", earned a three-minute ovation, a moment that PBS' director Brian Large captured in a memorable sustained close-up. In 2007, PBS viewers voted this the #1 "Great Moment" in 30 years of "Live from the Met" telecasts.
In all, Price sang 201 performances for the Met, in 16 roles, in the house and on tour, including galas. (She was absent for three seasons—1970–71, 1977–78, and 1980-81—and sang only in galas in 1972-73, 1979–80, and 1982-83.)
With time, Price's voice became darker and heavier, but her upper register held up well and the conviction and joy in her singing always spilled over the footlights. On November 19, 1997, she gave a recital at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill that turned out to be her last.
Price avoided the term African American, preferring to call herself an American, even a "chauvinistic American." She summed up her philosophy thus: "If you are going to think black, think positive about it. Don't think down on it, or think it is something in your way. And this way, when you really do want to stretch out, and express how beautiful black is, everybody will hear you."
Price gave several master classes at Juilliard and other schools. In 1997, she wrote a children's book version of Aida, which became the basis for a hit Broadway musical by Elton John and Tim Rice in 2000.
In October 2001, at age 74, Price was asked to come out of retirement and sing in a memorial concert in Carnegie Hall after the September 11 attacks. With James Levine at the piano, she sang a favorite spiritual, "This Little Light of Mine", followed by an unaccompanied "God Bless America", capping it with a bright, easy high B-flat. She lives in Greenwich Village in New York City.
She also recorded five Prima Donna albums of operatic arias that she never performed on stage, two albums of Richard Strauss arias, recitals of French and German art songs, two albums of Spirituals, and a crossover disc, Right as the Rain, with André Previn. Her Barber recordings included the "Hermit Songs", scenes from Antony and Cleopatra, and "Knoxville: Summer of 1915". These were reissued on CD as Leontyne Price Sings Barber. Perhaps her most well-regarded operatic solo disc was her first, titled Leontyne Price, and referred to as the "blue album" for its blue cover. It has been re-released several times on CD, and more recently on SACD.
In 1996, to honor her 70th birthday, RCA-BMG brought out a deluxe 11-CD box of selections from her recordings, with an accompanying book, titled The Essential Leontyne Price. Copies are hard to find; one was recently sold on EBay for $650. Archival recordings have also been released. In 2002, RCA found a tape of her 1965 Carnegie Hall recital debut and released it in its "Rediscovered" series. In 2005, Bridge Records released the 1954 Library of Congress recital with Barber, including the "Hermit Songs", Henri Sauguet's song-cycle "La Voyante", and songs by Poulenc.
Miles Davis, in his self-titled autobiography, writes of Price, "I have always been one of her fans because in my opinion she is the greatest female singer ever, the greatest opera singer ever. She could hit anything with her voice. Leontyne's so good it's scary. ... I love the way she sings Tosca. I wore out her recording of that, wore out two sets."
She has also had her critics. In his book The American Opera Singer, Peter G. Davis wrote that Price had "a fabulous vocal gift that went largely unfulfilled," criticizing her reluctance to try new roles, her Tosca for its lack of a "working chest register", and her late Aidas for a "swooping" vocal line. Others have criticized her lack of grace and flexibility in florid music, and her mannerisms, including occasional scooping or swooping up to high notes, gospel-style. Von Karajan took her to task for these in 1977 during rehearsals for Il trovatore, as Price herself related in an interview in Diva, by Helena Matheopoulos. As later recordings and appearances show, she sang with a cleaner line.
Her acting, too, varied over a long career. Her Bess was praised for her fire and sensuality, and tapes of the early NBC Opera appearances show her as an appealing presence on camera. In her early Met years, she was often noted for her dramatic as well as vocal skill. Later, she became a stiff, at times an awkward, singer-actress. She herself once said, "I don't expect to win any Academy Awards." In a 1982 Live from the Met TV broadcast of Forza, available on DVD, she carries herself with compelling dignity.
In March 2007, on BBC Music magazine's list of the "20 All-time Best Sopranos" based on a poll of 21 British music critics and BBC presenters, Leontyne Price placed fourth, after, in order, Maria Callas, Dame Joan Sutherland, and Victoria de los Ángeles.
Category:1927 births Category:Living people Category:American female singers Category:African American singers Category:American opera singers Category:United States National Medal of Arts recipients Category:Musicians from Mississippi Category:Operatic sopranos Category:People from Laurel, Mississippi Category:Grammy Award winners Category:Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award winners Category:Central State University alumni Category:Juilliard School of Music alumni Category:Kennedy Center honorees Category:People from Greenwich Village, New York Category:Spingarn Medal winners
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