Today In Black History: Opera Diva Grace Bumbry
Internationally Renowned Grammy Winner
Issue #957 Today In Black History, Wednesday, November 12, 2025
Born in 1937 in St. Louis, Missouri, Grace Bumbry’s journey into opera began with an insatiable passion for music, nurtured by a supportive family and community. Her remarkable vocal talent was evident from a young age, leading to opportunities that would have once seemed impossible for an African American girl in the mid-20th century. Bumbry’s success was not just a personal triumph but a significant cultural milestone.
Bumbry graduated from the prestigious Charles Sumner High School, the first Black high school west of the Mississippi. At age 17, she entered and won a teen talent contest sponsored by St. Louis radio station KMOX. Prizes for first place included a $1,000 war bond, a trip to New York, and a scholarship to the St. Louis Institute of Music. The institution, however, excluded African Americans, and Bumbry’s parents refused the offer of private voice lessons instead.
The embarrassed contest promoters arranged for her to appear on Arthur Godfrey‘s national radio program, Talent Scouts, singing Verdi’s aria “O don fatale” from Don Carlos. It moved Godfrey to tears. The success of that performance led to an opportunity to study at the Boston University College of Fine Arts. She later transferred to Northwestern University.
Bumbry gained international renown in 1961 when she was cast by Wieland Wagner, Richard Wagner’s grandson, as Venus in Tannhäuser at the 1961 Bayreuth Festival, at age 24, the first Black singer to appear there, which earned her the nickname “Black Venus”.
Bumbry’s performance was so moving that by the end of the opera, she had won the audience over, and they applauded for 30 minutes, necessitating 42 curtain calls. She subsequently became a trailblazer for diversity in the operatic arts.
This performance made Bumbry an international cause célèbre. She was invited by Jacqueline Kennedy to sing at the White House in 1962.
In 1966, she appeared as Carmen opposite Jon Vickers‘s Don José in two different lauded productions, one with conductor Herbert von Karajan in Salzburg, and the other for her debut with the San Francisco Opera.
Bumbry returned to the White House in 1981, singing at the Ronald Reagan inauguration.
In the 1990s, Bumbry founded the Grace Bumbry Black Musical Heritage Ensemble, a group devoted to preserving and performing traditional Negro spirituals; she toured with the group, and then devoted herself to teaching, judging international competitions, and to the concert stage, giving a series of recitals in 2001 and 2002.
On October 20, 2022, Bumbry was on a flight from Vienna to New York when she had a stroke. Her health declined over the following months, and she died from related complications at a hospital in Vienna on May 7, 2023, at age 86.
Today In Black History
In 1775, General George Washington issued an order forbidding recruiting officers from enlisting Blacks.
In 1900, African-American painter Henry O. Tanner, one of the 6,916 American exhibitors at the Paris Exposition, was awarded a silver medal for his entry.
In 1922, seven Black women in Indianapolis, Indiana, founded Sigma Gamma Rho Sorority to raise the standards of teachers in normal and other schools.
In 1941, Black opera singer Madame Lillian Evanti founded the National Negro Opera Company.
In 1946, Disney released “Song of the South,” a movie that contained many stereotypical depictions of Black people.
In 1974, the United Nations suspended South Africa from the General Assembly over its racist policies.
In 1977, Ernest Nathan Morial was elected as the first Black mayor of New Orleans, Louisiana.
In 2015, Barack Obama became the first sitting US President to pose for the cover of a gay magazine when he was named “Ally of the Year” by Out Magazine.
