Grace Bumbry, a pioneering mezzo-soprano who became the first Black singer to perform at Germany's Bayreuth Festival during a career of more than three decades on the world's top stages, has died. She was 86.
Bumbry died Sunday at Evangelisches Krankenhaus, a hospital in Vienna, according to her publicist, David Lee Brewer.
She sang in the choir at Ville’s Sumner High School and won a talent contest sponsored by radio station KMOX that included a scholarship to the St. Louis Institute of Music, but she was denied admission because she was Black. She sang on CBS’s “Arthur Godfrey’s Talent Scouts,” then attended Boston University College of Fine Arts. and Northwestern, where she met soprano Lotte Lehmann, who became her teacher at the Music Academy of the West in Santa Barbara, California, and a mentor.
The following year, she was cast by Wieland Wagner, a grandson of the composer, to sing Venus in a new production of “Tannhäuser” at the Richard Wagner Festival in Bayreuth. Bumbry's casting in a staging that included stars Wolfang Windgassen, Victoria de los Angeles and Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau resulted in 200 protest letters to the festival.
She appeared at the Met on Oct. 7, 1965, as Princess Eboli in Verdi's “Don Carlo,” the first of 216 performances with the company. Met general manager Peter Gelb said "opera will be forever in her debt for the pioneering role she played as one of the first great African American stars. “
France Dernières Nouvelles, France Actualités
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