Grace Bumbry, opera singer, 1937-2023

A “big discovery” declared Die Welt, an “artistic triumph” raved the Kölnische Rundschau, while The Sunday Times noted that “The finest singing of all came [from] . . . the magnificent ‘Black Venus’ of Grace Bumbry”. For opera fans in attendance, 24-year-old Bumbry’s performance as Venus in Wagner’s Tannhäuser at the 1961 Bayreuth Festival marked the moment a star was born.

For so-called “Old Wagnerians” and neo-Nazis, however, her very appearance — Bumbry was the first black singer to perform at Bayreuth, a place steeped in Wagnerian myth and fraught with racist associations — represented “a cultural crime”. The festival management received more than 200 letters of complaint and controversy threatened to overshadow the event.

Bumbry, who has died aged 86, was one of the most talented and charismatic sopranos of the late 20th century, known for her wide-ranging repertoire, which also spanned baroque, bel canto and spirituals. But it was her achievement at Bayreuth — singing one of the most demanding operatic roles, in some of the most challenging circumstances — for which she will be remembered.

In February 1962, fresh from her European triumph, Bumbry was invited by Jacqueline Kennedy to sing at a White House state dinner. Having made her debut at Paris Opéra in 1960, singing Amneris in Verdi’s Aida, Bumbry was soon attracting attention for her performances of Handel arias and lieder by Schubert and Brahms, in her home country. Critics gushed over her vocal prowess, but her glamour was not overlooked.

“[Bumbry’s] stage presence suggests a combination of an urchin and a leopard, with a lot of smoldering heat held resolutely in check,” wrote Winthrop Sargeant in The New Yorker after a 1962 Carnegie Hall recital.

Bumbry was born in St Louis, Missouri, in 1937. The daughter of a railway clerk and a schoolteacher, she sang in a church choir, and was taken by her parents to see Marian Anderson — who in 1955 became the first African American to sing a leading role at Metropolitan Opera — in recital.

“My mother was not an everyday mother,” Bumbry once explained. “She could have been the greatest diva of all time. But her mother wouldn’t allow it. My mother transferred the repressed energy of her artistic talent into me.”

Having won a scholarship to the St Louis Institute of Music in a local radio competition, Brumby was denied entry to the school on account of her race. She later studied at Northwestern University, where she became the protégé of the German soprano Lotte Lehmann. “I always say my mother gave me my first birth, and Madame Lehmann gave me my second,” Bumbry once said. “She opened me to the world.”

Making her Met debut in the role of Princess Eboli in Verdi’s Don Carlo in 1965, Bumbry was among a clutch of African-American singers to flourish in the postwar years — Leontyne Price, Shirley Verrett and George Shirley among them. But her focus was increasingly the European opera houses. In 1963 she married the tenor Erwin Jaeckel and settled in Lugano, Switzerland, which remained her home for over 40 years, although the couple divorced in 1972.

By the 1970s, Bumbry started to move on from the mezzo-soprano parts that had defined her early career, taking dramatic soprano parts, including the title roles in Strauss’ Salome, Verdi’s Aida and Puccini’s Tosca. Although some critics expressed doubts over her power in the higher register, all were agreed on Bumbry’s dazzling vocal agility. In 1978, she sang both the title role and that of Adalgisa in the same production of Bellini’s Norma at Covent Garden.   

Bumbry enjoyed a 20th-century prima donna lifestyle. She owned a Silver Cloud Rolls-Royce and an orange Lamborghini, and once had her Covent Garden dressing-room redecorated. “It didn’t cost much,” she remarked, “but it made an enormous difference to that miserable little room.”

In 1997, Bumbry formally retired from the opera stage, but she continued to teach and give recitals alongside her involvement with the Grace Bumbry Black Musical Heritage Ensemble, which she founded in 1994. Latterly, she was immersed in the musical life of Salzburg, where she moved in 2002 with her partner Jack Lunzer.

When asked in 2016 if she thought the situation for opera singers of colour had significantly improved in her lifetime, Bumbry replied: “All I can go by is what I see. By and large, I don’t think it’s as good as it could be — not yet. When you think about the fact that I’m still the only black Venus. It’s not only Bayreuth’s fault; I haven’t seen any other black singers as Venus, nor heard of one.” Seven years on, we are still waiting.

This article has been amended to make clear that Grace Bumbry settled in Lugano, Switzerland.

Letter in response to this obituary:

Don’t forget the conductor who championed Bumbry / From Harvey Clark Greisman, Wilmington, DE, US