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Chicago Sun-Times
Chicago Sun-Times
National
Ronald Blum | Associated Press

Grace Bumbry, 1st Black singer at Germany’s Bayreuth Festival, dies at 86

“Opera will be forever in her debt for the pioneering role she played as one of the first great African American stars,” Met general manager Peter Gelb said of Grace Bumbry. (Associated Press)

NEW YORK — 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.

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