The Leontyne Price Classical Arts Room

Mississippi gave the world two of the greatest soprano voices of the twentieth century. One is celebrated internationally. The other died before the world was ready to fully receive her. The Leontyne Price Classical Arts Room honors both — and in doing so, tells one of the most extraordinary and under sung stories in the history of American music.

‍ ‍Leontyne Price of Laurel, Mississippi needs little introduction. Widely regarded as one of the greatest operatic sopranos in history, she made her Metropolitan Opera debut in 1961 and received an unprecedented nineteen curtain calls — a standing ovation that lasted forty-two minutes. She received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the National Medal of Arts, and nineteen Grammy Awards. She is Mississippi’s most celebrated classical musician, and this room will honor her legacy with the permanence it deserves.

But the room’s other honored figure is a story that must be told in full because it has been too long overlooked. Ruby Elzy was born in Pontotoc, Mississippi in 1908, the daughter of a single mother who supported four children by teaching school, picking cotton, and doing laundry for white families. She learned her first spirituals from her grandmother, who had been born a slave. She sang her first church solo at the age of four. In 1927, a visiting professor from Ohio State University heard her singing at Rust College in Holly Springs — and was so overwhelmed by what he heard that he arranged for her immediate transfer to his university. From Ohio State she won a fellowship to the Juilliard School in New York. From Juilliard she was personally selected by George Gershwin to create the role of Serena in the world premiere of Porgy and Bess in 1935 — a role she performed more than eight hundred times. She sang at the Hollywood Bowl with the Los Angeles Philharmonic. She performed at the White House at the personal invitation of First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt. She appeared in films alongside Paul Robeson and Bing Crosby. By 1943, she had signed a contract to make her grand opera debut in the title role of Verdi’s Aida — the fulfillment of her life’s dream. One week after her final performance as Serena, Ruby Elzy died in Detroit following surgery to remove a benign tumor. She was thirty-five years old.

Ruby Elzy is one of the greatest singers Mississippi ever produced — and one of the least known. The Leontyne Price Classical Arts Room will change that. Alongside the celebrated career of Leontyne Price, it will tell Ruby Elzy’s story in full: a Mississippi girl born into poverty, discovered by chance, trained at the finest institutions in America, embraced by George Gershwin and Eleanor Roosevelt, and lost far too soon. Together, these two women represent the full arc of what Mississippi talent, given the opportunity to flourish, is capable of producing.

The room will also honor Lehman Engel of Jackson — composer, conductor, and one of the most influential figures in the history of American musical theater — as a third pillar of Mississippi’s extraordinary contribution to the classical and concert stage.