Mary Violet Leontyne Price (born February 10, 1927) is an American soprano. Born and raised in Laurel, Mississippi, she rose to international acclaim in the 1950s and 1960s, and was the first African American to become a leading artist at the Metropolitan Opera. One critic characterized Price's voice as "vibrant", "soaring" and "a Price beyond pearls", as well as "genuinely buttery, carefully produced but firmly under control", with phrases that "took on a seductive sinuousness." Time magazine called her voice "Rich, supple and shining, it was in its prime capable of effortlessly soaring from a smoky mezzo to the pure soprano gold of a perfectly spun high C." A lirico spinto (Italian for "pushed lyric") soprano, she was considered especially well suited to the roles of Giuseppe Verdi and Giacomo Puccini, as well as several in operas by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.

In November 1954, Price made her recital debut at New York's Town Hall with a program that featured the New York premiere of Samuel Barber's cycle Hermit Songs, with the composer at the piano, and began her first recital tour in the Community Concerts series for Columbia Artists. Then, the door to opera opened through television, the NBC Opera Theater series. In February 1955, she sang Puccini's Tosca for the NBC Opera Theater, under music director Peter Herman Adler, becoming the first African American to appear in a leading role in televised opera. Several NBC affiliates (not all Southern) canceled the broadcast in protest. She returned in three other NBC Opera broadcasts, as Pamina (1956), Madame Lidoine in Poulenc's Dialogues of the Carmelites (1957), and Donna Anna in Don Giovanni (1960).  In March 1955, she was auditioned at Carnegie Hall by the Austrian conductor Herbert von Karajan, who was then touring with the Berlin Philharmonic. Impressed with her singing of "Pace, pace, mio Dio" from Verdi's La forza del destino, Karajan reportedly leapt to the stage to accompany her himself. Calling her "an artist of the future" he asked her management for control of her future European career. Over the next three seasons, Price crossed the U.S. in recitals with her longtime accompanist, David Garvey, and in orchestral appearances. She also toured India (1956) and Australia (1957), under the auspices of the U.S. State Department. She sang a concert version of Aida--her first public performance of the role--at the May Festival in Ann Arbor, Michigan, on May 3, 1957.  Her first appearance on the grand opera stage occurred in San Francisco on September 20, 1957, singing Madame Lidoine in the U.S. premiere of the Dialogues of the Carmelites. A few weeks later, Price sang her first on-stage Aida, stepping in for Italian soprano Antonietta Stella, who was suffering from appendicitis. The following May, she made her European debut, as Aida, at the Vienna Staatsoper on May 24, 1958, at Karajan's invitation and under his baton. Debuts followed at London's Royal Opera House, Covent Garden (replacing Anita Cerquetti), and at the Arena di Verona, both as Aida. The next season she returned to Vienna to sing Aida and her first onstage Pamina in The Magic Flute, repeated her Aida at Covent Garden, sang operatic scenes by R. Strauss on BBC Radio, and made her debut at the Salzburg Festival in Beethoven's Missa Solemnis, under Karajan.  The close artistic understanding between Karajan and Price was reflected in many of her early career successes in the opera house (Mozart's Don Giovanni, Verdi's Il trovatore and Puccini's Tosca), in the concert hall (Bach's Mass in B minor, Beethoven's Missa Solemnis, Bruckner's Te Deum, and the Requiems of Verdi and Mozart), and in the recording studio (complete recordings of Tosca and Carmen, and a bestselling holiday music album, A Christmas Offering). Most of her recordings and many of her live performances have been released on CD.  On May 21, 1960, Price made her first appearance at the Teatro alla Scala in Milan, again as Aida, becoming the first African American to sing a leading role in Italy's greatest opera house. (In 1958, Mattiwilda Dobbs had sung Elvira, the secondary lead soprano role in Rossini's L'italiana in Algeri.) Answer this question using a quote from the following article:

How many times did she preform there?
the door to opera opened through television, the NBC Opera Theater series. In February 1955, she sang Puccini's Tosca for the NBC Opera Theater,