Grace Bumbry, a singer of radiant charisma, expansive range and superstar glamour who became one of the first African Americans to conquer the international opera stage, has died aged 86.
Few audiences had ever heard a Black singer perform in an opera house when Bumbry was growing up in St Louis in the 1930s and 40s, the daughter of a railway clerk and a schoolteacher. Segregation dominated American institutions, including the local music conservatory, where Bumbry was denied entrance despite the talent she had shown from her earliest days singing in the choir of her family’s Methodist church.
