Who was Grace Bumbry? Opera singer of lustrous power dies at 86

Grace Melzia Bumbry, an American opera singer who was a top mezzo-soprano of her generation as well as a significant soprano earlier in her career, died at the age of 86.

David Lee Brewer, her publicist, announced her death. Ms. Bumbry had a stroke last October.

Bumbry, who was born on January 4, 1937, was part of a pioneering generation of African-American opera and classical singers that included Martina Arroyo, Shirley Verrett, Jessye Norman, Kathleen Battle, and Reri Grist, who succeeded Marian Anderson in the worlds of opera and classical music.

Bumbry’s voice was rich and lively, with a wide range and the ability to produce a very distinct plangent tone.

In her prime, she also possessed good agility and bel canto technique (see, for example, her versions of Verdi’s Don Carlo’s ‘Veil Song’ in the 1970s and 1980s, as well as her Ernani from the Lyric Opera of Chicago in 1984).

On stage, she was known for her fiery nature and dramatic passion.

More recently, she had also become known as a recitalist and interpreter of lieder, and as a teacher. From the late 1980s on, she concentrated her career in Europe, rather than in the United States.

A long-time resident of Switzerland, she spent her last years in Vienna, Austria, where she died on May 7, 2023.