"There were no more colleagues at this level": That's how self-confidently Grace Bumbry (1937-2023) used to justify her stage farewell. © Christian Behring
Bayreuth gave her her breakthrough in 1961. Grace Bumbry was much more impressive as Eboli or Lady Macbeth than in the role of "Black Venus". Now she has died in Vienna at the age of 86.
In the "very best of times" she had made a career, "with great colleagues". So why, Grace Bumbry used to ask, should she mourn this era? Apparently, long after the stage farewell, she was at peace with herself. After all, the American and Viennese by choice remained in demand. As a juror, especially as a teacher, also as the founder of an opera academy at the Berlin University of the Arts – after all, she had a lot to pass on. At the age of 86, this stage legend has now died in a Viennese clinic.
Just the fact that you can't classify Grace Bumbry (soprano? Mezzo?), underlines their exceptional status. And if you reduce it only to its breakthrough, you don't do it justice to the bumbry. Because, yes: In 1961, she was the first black Venus in Bayreuth's "Tannhäuser". There, on the formerly brown hill, where Germanic phenotypes with blond hair wigs cavorted in the productions for a long time. It was a sensation, Wieland Wagner brought her to Upper Franconia. It was forgotten what a terrific singer was on stage. Trained as a master student of the great Lotte Lehmann and blessed with a rich voice and enormous acting intensity. The fact that Bumbry has long been reduced to the color of her skin is a racism that basically persists today.
At the age of 17 she was already singing the Eboli
She was born in 1937 in St. Louis, Missouri. The parents, he a railway employee, she a housewife, believed in the daughter's talent. At the age of 17, Grace Bumbry won a radio competition when she performed an aria of her later fateful part: Eboli's "O don fatale" from Verdi's "Don Carlo". A craziness at this early stage. But a piece with which she was able to demonstrate all the virtues of her voice. The agility, the substantial foundation, the effortless height. Grace Bumbry was trained as a mezzo-soprano, including in Boston, but her voice pushed her way up into the soprano region.
She herself has always felt like both. In addition to Eboli and Amneris in Verdi's "Aida", she sang Puccini's Tosca, Strauss' Salome or, as a role between the two vocal worlds, Verdi's Lady Macbeth. Herbert von Karajan brought her in as Carmen. During rehearsals, it is reported, the star conductor and car enthusiast reacted strangely to the young singer's Lamborghini – until Grace Bumbry let him get behind the wheel. "After that, we were good friends," she later recalled.
And, another special feature: Grace Bumbry's excellent German also enabled her for the corresponding repertoire up to the art song. With her career, she had entered a prominent position early on. At the New York Metropolitan Opera in 1958 she landed at the top of a competition – only to go to Europe shortly afterwards. Bumbry made her stage debut in Basel, followed shortly afterwards by London and Paris, and at least since the Bayreuth "Tannhäuser" Grace Bumbry moved in the opera Olympus.
In 2010, she risked her comeback in Paris
It is also true that the voice did not withstand all the stresses. She made up for technical problems with an almost oversized presence. Moreover, Grace Bumbry was not one of the singers loved by the microphones. The recordings therefore only imperfectly reflect what the art of Bumbry was all about. This is not a malus, she was and is not alone in this – the importance of her colleague Julia Varady can only be appreciated by those who have ever experienced her on stage. With its fury, which also deliberately crossed borders, Bumbry repeatedly seized opera performances.
Not only thanks to the Bayreuth Venus, it also stood for the emancipation movement and the struggle for freedom of the black population. Bumbry became an icon who was also revered outside the opera houses – and thus one of the most famous singers of the 20th century.
In 1997 she announced her departure from the opera stage – only to celebrate her spectacular comeback in Paris in 2010. And this as Monisha in Scott Joplin's only opera "Treemonisha". Again and again song and aria recitals, the cessation was not as easy as Bumbry had imagined. She felt that the end of her career was "a bit too early", as she said in an ORF interview a few years ago. And justified the cut in her typically self-confident way: There were simply no colleagues "at this level". "I didn't want to be the only elephant left."