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page 24 A M GRAACE In five decades, Grace Bumbry’s career Z I N Offstage Grandeur Retired mezzo-soprano Grace Bumbry against the G operatic backdrop of Salzburg, Austria, where she lives within view of a famous statue The exact of Wolfgang number of curtain Amadeus Mozart. calls — thirty-two or forty-two? — has blurred with time, but a half century has done nothing to dull the historic impact of the moment when young mezzo-soprano Grace Bumbry broke the color barrier at the 1961 Bayreuth Festival. The self- assured beauty from St. Louis, Missouri, knocked the socks off a throng of tight- jawed Wagnerians, conservative opera- goers who had huffed that Bumbry’s casting as Venus in the production of BY SUSAN SELIGSON PHOTOGRAPHED BY ANDREA ARTZ AT THE FELSENREITSCHULE IN SALZBURG 24-25 Only_r1.indd 24 6/14/10 3:19 PM r has soared, from Wagner to Scott Joplin Summer 2010 BOSTONIA 25 24-25 Only_r1.indd 25 6/14/10 3:19 PM grace bumbry in January 1968 in her dressing room at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, London, where she sang the role of Amneris in Verdi’s Aïda. /HARRIS AP PHOTO/STAFF Tannhäuser was a cultural outrage. Now seventy-three, Bumbry of syphilis in 1917, never saw a But her role as the goddess of (CFA’55) was celebrated in Decem- full production of Treemonisha, love thrilled Wieland Wagner, the ber with a Kennedy Center Honor, which wasn’t performed until 1972, composer’s grandson, who declared along with Bruce Springsteen, in Atlanta. Racism undoubtedly that Wagner “would have been Robert De Niro, Dave Brubeck, played a role in the long, crushing delighted. He wrote for vocal color, and Mel Brooks. This spring, efforts of America’s undisputed not skin color.” she was lured out of retirement king of ragtime to make his mark Bumbry and her audience have to perform the role of the mother as a composer for the lyrical enjoyed one of the richest operatic in a production of Scott Joplin’s stage. The opera won Joplin a careers of the twentieth century. Treemonisha at the Théâtre du posthumous Pulitzer Prize. In her heyday she belonged to that Châtelet in Paris, the city where In five decades on the stage, rare opera breed — the mezzo- she made her debut fifty years ago. Bumbry mastered a wide range soprano superstar, taking her place She sang Amneris in Verdi’s Aïda, of mezzo, and later soprano, in the firmament because of her at the Grand Opera, a year before roles, from Puccini to Wagner riveting stage presence as Bayreuth. to Verdi, from a steamy Carmen WEB EXTRA well as her versatile voice. Bumbry could not pass up the and a vibrant Dalila to Adalgisa, Watch a video “Her big break was chance to be a part of the Joplin Gioconda, Tosca, Elvira, Leonora, of mezzo- soprano singing Venus at Bayreuth,” opera, a century after it was com- Salome, Eboli, and Medea. “Her Grace Bumbry says Richard Dyer, who posed, heading an all-black cast Carmen wasn’t particularly French, teaching a retired recently after thirty- from the United States and Africa. but it was spectacularly sung,” says master class three years as classical In Treemonisha, set in 1884, an Dyer. “To me her great roles were for BU’s Opera Institute music critic for the Boston adopted daughter of an Arkansas Verdi roles — Aïda and Don Carlo.” students Globe. “That was the holiest plantation manager tries to wrench In 1985, Bumbry overcame a at bu.edu/ of holies, playing a major her people free from ignorance long reluctance and sang Bess, bostonia. Wagner role.” and superstition. Joplin, who died with Simon Estes, a College of Fine 26 BOSTONIA Summer 2010 24-28_Bumbry.indd 26 6/17/10 4:20 PM grace bumbry with fellow 2009 Kennedy Center honorees: (from left) Robert De Niro, Bruce Springsteen, Mel Brooks, and Dave Brubeck. Arts professor, singing Porgy, in a Metropolitan Opera performance honoring the golden anniversary of the Gershwin classic. “Miss Bumbry floated and sustained several nice high pianissimos … and in general caught the Gershwin vocal style with more success than might have been expected from a certified diva,” wrote Donal Henahan in the New York Times. As her career and her renown soared, the unfailingly glamorous Bumbry, who drove an orange Lamborghini, remained at her WOLF AP PHOTO/KEVIN At seventeen Bumbry won a local radio competition with a rendition of “O don fatale” from Don Carlo. career. She sings at church every she set the aspiring performers core the middle-class daughter Sunday from her seat in the con- at ease. To a baby-faced tenor of a railroad freight handler and gregation. “I always loved Salzburg singing an aria from Mozart’s Cosi a homemaker. A serious student when I sang here in the summers fan tutte: “You sing so well, you who sang in the church choir, at of the sixties and seventies,” says don’t want any blemish,” Bumbry seventeen she won a local radio Bumbry, who became a Messianic said with a faintly German accent, competition with a rendition of Jew ten years ago. the Missouri lilt lost to years of “O don fatale” from Don Carlo. A former honorary UNESCO singing lieder and conversing in the The honor was bittersweet; the ambassador, Bumbry is known for languages of Europe. “Can we go prize included admission to a other off-stage roles, including back to that G sharp?” segregated local conservatory founder of the Grace Bumbry Black “Brighter As, brighter As!” she that would provide the promising Musical Heritage Ensemble, which chirped to another young man, and black teenager only with private she created in the 1990s to promote went on to stop a soprano in mid- lessons. At that time racism was Negro spirituals and gospel music fermata, warning, “You’re going to still endemic in the classical music as concert fare. Currently dormant, tire yourself!” world. Mezzo-soprano Shirley the choir reflected her conviction, Describing the experience as Verrett, whose career paralleled as she told the New York Times, a bit of a tease, she says her time Bumbry’s in many ways, tells in a that “the spiritual is the American with each student was far too 2003 memoir of being invited to classic, as Brahms and Beethoven brief and “unfair to teacher and sing with the Houston Symphony are the European classic.” student alike.” She’d like more time in the early sixties, only to have Bumbry has a fondness for both with these young voices, time to the invitation withdrawn when the Boston and BU, and she returns understand their breathing, their orchestra board refused to feature a periodically to lecture and teach, as use of vowels, their musicality, and black soloist. she did last January, when she held their cultures, which affect both the a master class for students in BU’s singing and the learning process, OFFSTAGE ROLES Opera Institute. As a succession says Bumbry, who works with many With her nine-year marriage to of formally attired and coiffed international students, from as Swiss tenor Erwin Andreas Jaeckel young men and women took their close as Germany, France, Belgium, nearly forty years in the past, places by the piano accompanists, and Austria to as far away as Korea, Bumbry lives in Salzburg’s Mozart Bumbry sat stage right with an Japan, Russia, and the United Square, where her surroundings alert but sympathetic expression. States. are as timeless and picturesque Although she didn’t mince words “I’d like very much to come as the stage backdrops of her rich and occasionally interrupted, back to Boston to teach,” she says. Summer 2010 BOSTONIA 27 24-28_Bumbry.indd 27 6/17/10 4:21 PM “I think I could be of enormous roles, beginning in 1963 with Lady most comparisons, so music critics help. I got the impression from the Macbeth at Basel. Some critics were on high alert when the pair students that they were almost felt her reach exceeded her grasp. shared the stage at Carnegie Hall starving for information; it said to “She and Shirley Verrett both made at an eightieth birthday tribute me that there’s something I have the move up to soprano, but Shirley to Marian Anderson in 1982. The that they aren’t able to get. It has to really was a soprano and Grace concert reportedly took years to do with being a performer on the wasn’t,” says Dyer. “I saw her as arrange, and with their overlapping stage. It’s one thing to be a teacher, Medea at the City Opera and she careers and shared migration from but you have to have been on the was very striking in it, but as a so- mezzo to soprano roles, much was stage to really know what to expect. prano her high notes didn’t have made of the singers’ professional “Both teacher and student have the color and richness of the rest rivalry and reluctance to perform a lot of homework to do if you want of her voice. All her high notes together. But those who attended, to perform well,” she says, adding, sounded the same, whereas the including Dyer, say it was an unfor- after a beat or two, “and have a long middle of her voice was a fascin- gettable afternoon. “No smiles, career.” ating kaleidoscope of colors, and no gracious gestures or protesta- Bumbry’s own two-year stint she could do whatever she wanted.” tions to the contrary could hide the electricity of this rivalry,” wrote Bernard Holland in the New York “From my first performance I knew what Times.