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[[caption]] Cunningham, Lewis, Coleman, Powell, Hampton, Brooke, Jones, Lopez, Harris, Coleman, Scott, Rhone [[/caption]]

Thus, with all the adulation from presidents and emperors, governments and universities and the hundreds of appearances at one important celebration or another, Miss Anderson has never for a moment lost track of the fact that she is first and always a musician. She has said, "It is my honest belief that to contribute to the betterment of something, one can do it best in the medium through which one expresses one's self most easily."

And no one can doubt that for Miss Anderson her music has been primarily a means of communication. As anyone who has heard her could testify, it has often seemed, too, a medium of prayer.

This recording, then, is a souvenir of a particular time and place and of an art that has given joy and solace and pride to untold thousands of people on every continent. It does not pretend to explore every facet of that art, and yet it does contain perhaps its central fact—the direct communication of one soul with another.

Although Miss Anderson is retiring from the concert stage, she is far from retiring from the world about her. The United Nations, homeless children, high school "Dropouts," are among the causes which she looks forward to espousing.

As Washington's Mr. Hume wrote at the end of his review of this concert, "No tribute to Marian Anderson could be too large. Our concert halls will be immeasurable poorer for her departure, but we may hope that our life as a people will continue to be enriched by her undiminished service."

LEONTYNE PRICE

The role of Tosca has played a key part in the spectacular career of Leontyne Price. It marked her operatic debut, but not in an opera house. It was on television, with the NBC Opera Company in 1955, and it brought her nationwide fame. Before this the Mississippi-born soprano, who had been a scholarship student at the Juilliard School of Music in New York, had attracted attention in Virgil Thomson's Four Saints in Three Acts and Gershwin's Porgy and Bess. Her "on stage" debut took place in San Francisco in 1957 where she sang in Poulenc's Dialogues of the Carmelites followed by Aida. The following year she made her European grand opera debut at the Vienna State Opera, at the invitation of Herbert von Karajan for whom the singer has the warmest admiration. An uninterrupted string of European successes followed, from the Salzburg Festival to La Scala. 1961 brought the great soprano to the Metropolitan where she stars in operas of Verdi, Mozart and Puccini. Leontyne Price has sung the roles of many of the Puccini heroines—Tosca, Butterfly, Liu in Turandot and Minnie in The Girl of the Golden West. The last inspired the headline of the New York Times:"The Girl of the Golden Voice." Time Magazine headlined a story about her: "A Voice Like a Banner Flying."

For RCA Victor Leontyne Price has recorded the operas Aida, Trovatore, Don Giovanni and Butterfly. She is also a soloist in the Verdi Requiem, conducted by Fritz Reiner, issues in the Soria Series.

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