When I was a teenager and vulnerable to fashion, I was much taken with Bertolt Brecht’s acid observation that those who desire heroes are saps. Now that I have put off childish things, I see Brecht for what he was, and that heroes, like ideals, have their place. In my boyhood, there were many heroes, but two who towered. One was Mickey Lolich, the portly pitcher for the Detroit Tigers. I don’t think of the Mick much anymore; he went on to run a doughnut shop north of the city. The other was Leontyne Price, the soprano. I think about her a lot, and the other week I heard my eighth Price recital.
These recitals have made for 16 or so well-spent hours, and anyone who has attended just one of them can say why. First, there is the voice, a mysterious instrument about which rivers of ink have been spilled for almost five decades. And second, there is the woman herself, whose character seems inseparable from her musicianship. It is often said that a recital with her is a religious experience. That this is often said — a hackneyed beliefsmakes it no less true. A Price recital is a strange mixture of prima- donnafest and church service, with no small amount of personal idolatry thrown in. And in an age that prizes unpredictability and change, they are always, dependably, the same, these recitals.
She enters ready for business — all gown and smile and diva regality — and feigns astonishment at the frenzied adulation of the audience. Then she opens the program with something Baroque (normally Handel or Bach). Following is a Mozart aria, cleanly Classical and daringly uncovered. Next comes the lieder set — some combination of Joseph Marx, Hugo Wolf, and Richard Strauss. (“As someone remarked to Schubert, “Take me to your lieder,‘” Tom Lehrer once quipped.) The first half closes with a blockbuster Italian aria. This may well be Verdi’s “Pace, Pace” from La Forza del Destino, whose concluding maledictions — ferociously hurled by one of history’s most convincing Leonoras — leave the fans numb and amazed as they head for the lobby.
She returns, to even more ecstatic applause, for a French set: Faur, Poulenc, conservatory chestnuts like “Chore unit,” all delivered with unmannered refinement and Gallic cool. Then you have the American group, in which she honors and gives a leg up to her friends: Samuel Barber (no longer in need of promotion), Ned Rorem (ditto he does enough of it himself), Lee Hoiby, Margaret Bonds, and others. She ends the printed program with two spirituals. The second is almost always “Ride On, King Jesus.” The first may be “Witness,” “My Soul is Anchored in the Lord,” or “Every Time I Feel the Spirit.” (Once when she was singing this latter, I could have sworn she looked dead into my eyes on the line, “Now, come on, sinner: Don’t you be late.”)
The encores are plentiful: Puccini’s “Vissi d’arte” from Tosca, “Tu? Tu? Piccolo iddio” from Madarna Butterfly (complete with simulated knife-plunge), and “Chi il bel sogno” from La Rondine (showing off on Cs, even at this hour). There is Gershwin’s “Summertime” (Porgy and Bess); the spiritual “This Leontyne Little Light o” Mine” which she announces was her mother’s favorite); and Cilea’s “Io son l’umile ancella” from Adriana Lecouvreur (whose final A- fiat can be floated forever, even as you start back to the wings with a little valedictory wave of the hand).
It does not alter, and that is the glory of it. The buyer knows what he is getting, and the seller never disappoints. There is such a thing as a performing genius — different from a creative genius — and Price clearly is one.
What she has, Kreisler and Beecham and Rubinstein had. It cannot be taught, cannot be earned, can only be saluted when on display. Price is every inch the opera star (and why shouldn’t she be, given that she has caused all of the fabled houses to kneel at her feet?). But she appears genuinely humble and grateful, and when she says, as she does, “I love you,” it is not in the air-kissy manner of the socialite, but with the sincerity of the devout and serene.
One wonders, fretfully, how long she will go on. She is only two years younger than Bob Dole, and you Price are not supposed to be able to sing for as long as you can run for president. Recordings will explain only part of the phenomenon to grandchildren. Everyone disdains the bore who says, “You had to have heard so-and-so in the flesh, because the recordings simply don’t do him justice,” but in Price’s case, it is so.
I said earlier that, in rejecting Brechtian cynicism, I had put off childish things. But actually, an appreciation of heroes is more like a return to the pure and honest beliefs of a child. And Leontyne Price, against the leveling tendencies of an unheroic age, is a giant.
Mickey Lolich? He wasn’t bad, either.
By Jay Nordlinger
