Uploaded by Addiobelpassato
on Oct 24, 2011
Leonora Lafayette sings "Mi chiamano Mimi"
from La Bohème by Giacomo Puccini
Hallé Orchestra
Sir John Barbirolli, conductor
The
story of how Leonora Lafayette, a young woman from Baton Rouge, La.,
came to sing at Covent Garden is almost a fairy tale. She was 26 years
old and living in Basel, Switzerland, performing leading roles in operas
there as well as in Germany and France. At 1:15
p.m. on Jan. 28, 1953, Lafayette received a phone call asking her to
come to London to perform the leading role in the 7 p.m. performance of
Aida at the Covent Garden. Even without a rehearsal, Lafayette was a
smashing success. She was applauded for overcoming the obstacle of
substituting for the Dutch singer Gre Brouwenstijn — and, as an English
critic wrote, "the exceptional beauty and vitality of her voice, the
simple dignity of her stage presence, and the truthfulness of her
acting."
Lafayette's musical career began at McKinley High
School in Baton Rouge. After graduation, she received special training
at Fisk University in Nashville, Tenn. She won the Marian Anderson Award
(for using the arts for the betterment of society; Mia Farrow is the
2011 winner) in 1947 and a year later won a $2,000 Julius Rosenwald
Fellowship and studied at Juilliard School of Music in New York. In
1950, Lafayette won the $3,000 John Hay Whitney Fellowship to study in
Europe. A year later, in 1951, she starred in Aida at the Basel Opera
House and so impressed everyone that she was signed for a full season.
Health problems put her in the hospital, but Lafayette managed to enter
and place second in a prestigious international musical competition in
Geneva. With this win she received many offers to perform and was able
to stay in Europe, where Sir John Barbirolli sought her out to star in
Aida at Covent Garden. She later returned to play the lead in Puccini's
Madama Butterfly.
Leonora Lafayette did not achieve the fame of
contemporaries such as Leontyne Price, and segregation limited her
stardom in America, but Lafayette's international career lasted until
right before the civil rights movement — and she made history as the
first African-American to perform at the Royal Opera House — or any
English opera house.
She died of cancer in 1975.
Comment by email:
Comment by email:
I asked two former classmates at Juilliard of Leontyne Price
what it was like -- Calvin Lampley and Elaine Kelly. They independently said
Miss Price would walk past the lounge, her music held tightly in her arms, and
nod to her friends without slowing her pace to the practice rooms. They both
regarded Price as an extraordinary talent but the one they most admired was
Leonora Lafayette. Dominique-René de Lerma
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