Amazing Grace is 80 today
mainThe first black singer to appear at Bayreuth, Grace Bumbry has blazed trails of glory across the opera world for more than half a century.
She made her debut in Paris in 1960 as Amneris. Wieland Wagner cast her as Venus in Tannhäuser in summer 1961. Jackie Kennedy summoned her to sing at the White House. Vienna upgraded her to soprano in Verdi’s Macbeth.
She made a much-belated Met debut as Tosca in 1971, together with conductor James Levine, also on debut.
In in 2013, she sang the Countess at the Vienna State Opera in Tchaikovsky’s Pique Dame.
Happy birthday, amazing Grace.
A truly fabulous singer – I remember a glorious concert with Shirley Verrett in the 1980s at Covent Garden.
…..and a Selika with a wild but exciting Bonisolli in L’Africaine.
Grace Bumbry sang at Bayreuth ten years before she made her Met debut? Incredible.
Here she is with Cheryl Studer in 1987 in Vienna in Gluck’s “Telemaco”
https://youtu.be/jN7pBJBwfLs
Her Met debut was as Eboli, 1965.
Correct. The same performance Nicolai Ghiaruov made his debut, as King Philip
She was a fabulous Salome – both singing and acting – for Solti at Covent Garden c. 1970.
I saw it, I still have the programme.
Was it for those performances that she said in an interview, in answer to press’ questions, that she would disrobe down to nothing but her perfume?
If memory serves (and it was a very long time ago), she wore a body stocking. I was too far away to know about the perfume.