Leontyne Price and 9/11.

Leontyne Price, looking every inch the American Monument that she is, sang "This Little Light o' Mine", changing the words to "Ours". She ended it with a perfectly sustained and diminished high note (a C? I'm not infallible at these things) and of course there was pandemonium. Despite the mad diva-worship going on, she maintained her look of deepest gravity and intent, and sang "America the Beautiful", pride and determination personified, and capped the final "shining sea" with a shining C (I think) or her own. In spite of the thunderous, worshipful applause, she did not sing anything else, and her look made it very clear that this was not about her but something bigger. A wonderful evening. This is just SO LIKE HER. At Bob Jacobson's funeral, during one of the first peaks of the AIDS crisis several Met singers introduced themselves and sang this aria or that. She did not introduce herself, just walked up, sang the piss out of "Vissi d'arte", and sat down. She was paying tribute to a good friend, and stating her mind, and no other considerations were of interest to her. She has also been a good neighbor (she lives a mile north of the towers; I overlook her backyard), and chaired the effort to rebuild St. Luke's after its fire, and famously (among the old Italian inhabitants of this neighborhood), came to St. Anthony of Padua church and sang at the funeral of the old man whose liquor store she had long frequented.