Trailblazing black Opera singer Grace Bumbry has passed away in a Vienna hospital, her publicist confirmed. She was 86.
One of the pioneering black women who broke the color barrier in Opera music, Bumbry was a celebrated singer who led a trailblazing jet-setting career that lasted more than three decades.
She was part of a group of path-breaking black female singers that included Jessye Norman, Shirley Verrett, and Leontyne Price.
Bumbry became the first black singer to perform at Germany’s prestigious Bayreuth festival.
In October 2022, Bumbry was inducted into America’s Opera Hall of Fame, where she suffered a heart attack. She was recovering from the heart attack at a Vienna hospital.
Bumbry was born in 1937 in St Louis Missouri to a railroad porter and schoolteacher. As a young girl, her mother took her to an opera performance by legendary Opera singer Marian Anderson. The event she told the NPR told her life.
“I knew I had to be a singer,” Bumbry said. “I studied piano from age 7 until I was 15 but I wanted to…seriously become a singer of classical music.”
