Grace Bumbry
Grace Melzia Bumbry (January 4, 1937 – May 7, 2023) was an American opera singer, considered one of the leading mezzo-sopranos of her generation, who also ventured to soprano roles. She belonged to a pioneering generation of African-American classical singers, led by Marian Anderson. She was recognized internationally when Wieland Wagner cast her for the 1961 Bayreuth Festival as Venus in Tannhäuser, the first black singer to appear at the festival.
Grace Bumbry
May 7, 2023 (aged 86)
Opera singer
1958–2023
Bumbry's voice was rich and dynamic, possessing a wide range, and was capable of producing a very distinctive plangent tone. In her prime, she also possessed good agility and bel canto technique, as for example her rendition of Eboli in Verdi's Don Carlo in the 1970s and 1980s. She was particularly noted for her fiery temperament and dramatic intensity on stage. Later, she also became known as a recitalist and interpreter of lieder, and as a teacher. From the late 1980s on, she concentrated her career in Europe, rather than in the United States. A long-time resident of Switzerland, she spent her last years in Vienna.
Early life and education[edit]
Grace Ann Melzia Bumbry was born in St. Louis, Missouri, on January 4, 1937.[1][2] She was the third child of Benjamin Bumbry, a railroad freight handler, and Melzia Bumbry, a teacher.[2] They were a family of modest means, deeply religious and highly musical.[3] Bumbry trained in classical piano beginning at age 7, but determined she would become a singer after seeing Marian Anderson in concert.[4][5] She joined the local Methodist choir at age 12, and performed as a soloist in school production of Handels Messiah. She listened to Anderson on radio and in recordings "at every opportunity",[6] and was also inspired to become a singer listening to the St. Louis Symphony conducted by Vladimir Golschmann.[6]
Bumbry graduated from the prestigious Charles Sumner High School, the first black high school west of the Mississippi.[7] She later credited Kenneth Billups, her voice teacher at Sumner (together with a later teacher, Armand Tokatyan of Santa Barbara) for her "vocal prowess". At age 17, at the urging of Billups and Sara Hopes, her choir director, she entered and won a teen talent contest sponsored by St. Louis radio station KMOX. Prizes for first place included a $1,000 war bond, a trip to New York, and a scholarship to the St. Louis Institute of Music. However, the institution excluded African Americans, and her parents refused the offer of private lessons instead.[6]
Embarrassed, the contest promoters arranged for her to appear on Arthur Godfrey's national radio broadcast Talent Scouts program, singing Verdi's aria "O don fatale" from Don Carlos. It moved Godfrey to tears.[6] The success of that performance led to an opportunity to study at Boston University College of Fine Arts.[3] She later transferred to Northwestern University,[1] where she met Lotte Lehmann, a German dramatic soprano, especially for Wagner roles, who gave master classes there and was impressed.
Lehmann invited Bumbry to study with her in Santa Barbara, California. Initially planned for just the summer of 1955, Bumbry remained on a scholarship by Lehmann[6] for three and a half years. During this time, she studied piano and theory (with György Sándor),[4] and then studied further interpretation and languages, and attended the summer programm of the Music Academy of the West in Montecito in three consecutive years, 1956, 57 and 58.[8] Lehmann was also her mentor in her early career.[6][9] Bumbry also studied with renowned teachers Marinka Gurewich[10] and Armand Tokatyan.[11][12] She studied singing lieder with Pierre Bernac in Paris.[1]
Vocal range[edit]
Bumbry's career in the world of opera was a remarkable and long one, if somewhat controversial. Initially, Bumbry began her career as a mezzo-soprano, but later expanded her repertoire to include many dramatic soprano roles. In the mid-1970s and 1980s she considered herself a soprano; but in the 1990s, as her career approached its twilight, she often returned to mezzo roles.[25]
She was one of the more successful singers who have made the transition from mezzo-soprano to soprano[36] (along with her compatriot and contemporary Shirley Verrett); however, audiences and critics were divided over whether she was a "true" soprano. Nonetheless, she sang major soprano roles at most major opera houses around the world up until the end of her operatic career in the 1990s—singing Puccini's Turandot at the Royal Opera House in 1993. Her main operatic career spanned from 1960, her debut in Paris as Amneris, to 1997 as Klytämnestra in Lyon.[1]
Honors[edit]
Among other honors, a UNESCO Award, five Distinguished Alumna Awards from the Music Academy of the West and Italy's Premio Giuseppe Verdi were bestowed on Bumbry and she was named Commandeur des Arts et Lettres by the French government.[25] She received a Grammy Award in 1972 for Best Opera Recording.[25][44] In 1992, Bumbry was inducted into the St. Louis Walk of Fame.[45] In 2005, she was presented with The Arts for Life Lifetime Achievement Award by the Marian Anderson Award Foundation.[46] In December 2009, she was among those honored with the 2009 Kennedy Center Honors, for her contribution to the performing arts.[47]