TV Tosca

In the U.S. it is still news when a Negro stars in grand opera, even in a role calling for a dark skin. Marian Anderson's Metropolitan Opera debut as the Negro Ulrica, in Un Ballo in Maschera (TIME, Jan. 17), made fortissimo headlines, and this week Baritone Robert McFerrin is causing another stir at the Met by singing the Ethiopian king Amonasro in Aida. The NBC Opera Theater was even bolder: this week it cast Leontyne Price, 26, as the Italian opera singer Tosca.

Producer Samuel Chotzinoff sent Soprano Price before the cameras without special makeup. At first sight, her striking features looked rather exotic, although the TV screen virtually wiped out the color contrast between her and other singers. But as Puccini's melodramatic opera proceeded, Soprano Price's quietly expressive acting began to tell and she became Floria Tosca, coquettish in the arms of her handsome lover (handsomely sung by Tenor David Poleri), murderous in the arms of the villainous police chief (Baritone Josh Wheeler), and distraught at her lover's death. Vocally, she was head and shoulders above the others, crooning pearly high notes here, dropping into gutty dramatic tones there. She sang the great second-act aria, Vissi d'arte (rendered in English as "Love of beauty") with a flair worthy of the Met. Except for clumsy phrases in the translation ("How your hatred enhances my resolve to possess you!"), and a phlegmatic but overbearing orchestra, TV's first Tosca was a rattling good show.

Soprano Price started her musical career playing the piano at parties and funerals back home in Laurel, Miss., where her father was a carpenter. At Central State College in Ohio, she expected to take a music education degree, instead discovered her voice ("All of a sudden you open your mouth and begin"). She won a Juilliard scholarship, decided to try an opera career despite the fact that at most a dozen roles in the standard repertory are usually considered "suitable" for female Negro singers. After a rousing debut in a Juilliard production of Falstaff, Soprano Price won the lead in the world-traveling revival of Porgy and Bess. (She later married her leading man, Baritone William Warfield.)

Bess and Tosca are not so very different, thinks Leontyne. "Things happened to Bess and she wasn't strong enough to control them. Tosca could control what happened to her better. Both were strumpets, only Tosca dressed better."

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