Description: Up for auction a RARE! "Welsh Soprano" Margaret Price Hand Signed TLS dated 1985. ES-406 Dame Margaret Berenice Price DBE (13 April 1941 – 28 January 2011) was a Welsh soprano. After graduation, she joined the Ambrosian Singers, performing with them on the soundtrack of the 1961 Charlton Heston film El Cid. She remained only briefly with that ensemble and later admitted to having struggled somewhat during her time with that group due to her inadequate skills at sight-singing. Unrecognised through the normal channel of competitions, she was championed by her now-converted father, who wrote to opera houses to arrange auditions. As a result, Price made her operatic debut in 1962, singing Cherubino in Mozart's The Marriage of Figaro at the Welsh National Opera. After her father wrote to the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden in 1962, she auditioned and was turned down twice by musical director Georg Solti who said that she "lacked charm". However, she was accepted as an understudy, thanks to casting director Joan Ingpen, and she formed of a close personal and professional relationship with pianist and conductor James Lockhart. Solti added a rider to her contract, stating that she should never expect to sing lead in the main house, so she sang minor roles as a mezzo. Her breakthrough came in 1963 when Teresa Berganza cancelled a performance and Price got the chance to take over as her nominated understudy, again in the role of Cherubino, a performance that made her famous overnight. After that, Lockhart convinced Price to take further singing lessons to improve her technique and develop the luminous high range that made her one of the most popular lyric sopranos of the 1970s and 1980s. In 1967, she performed with Benjamin Britten's English Opera Group in Mozart's The Impresario, and as Titania in Britten's A Midsummer Night's Dream. In 1968, critic Desmond Shawe-Taylor called her singing "brilliant, flexible and large scale" as Constanze in Mozart's Die Entführung aus dem Serail at Glyndebourne. As Price did not enjoy travelling, she always kept a "home" stage, where she stayed and performed for the majority of each year. Initially this was Covent Garden, but from 1971 she made Germany her base, initially at Cologne Opera where she made her debut in Don Giovanni, and latterly the Bavarian State Opera in Munich, where she lived until retirement in 1999. Price hence formed a professional relationship with Otto Klemperer, who conducted her first recording of a major role in a complete opera – Fiordiligi in Mozart's Così fan tutte. The 1972 recording established Price as a Mozart specialist. In the years that followed, Price appeared as a guest at important opera houses. Her Metropolitan Opera debut came in 1985 as Desdemona in Verdi's Otello. In 1989 she appeared in the WNO production of Salome at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in New York, in a performance attended by the Prince and Princess of Wales.
Price: 199.99 USD
Location: Fort Lauderdale, Florida
End Time: 2025-01-17T22:51:29.000Z
Shipping Cost: 0 USD
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Return shipping will be paid by: Buyer
All returns accepted: Returns Accepted
Item must be returned within: 14 Days
Refund will be given as: Money back or replacement (buyer's choice)
Industry: Music
Signed: Yes
Original/Reproduction: Original
