Pioneering African American Opera Singer Grace Bumbry Passes Away at 86

Grace Bumbry, one of the first African Americans to conquer the international opera stage, has died at the age of 86. She made international headlines in 1961 when she became the first African American to perform at the Bayreuth Festival in Germany. Bumbry pursued a remarkable range of roles in a stage career that lasted nearly 40 years. Her performance at Bayreuth notwithstanding, she did not consider herself a Wagnerian singer and said that the works of the 19th-century Italian composer Giuseppe Verdi were her “heart and soul.”