Great Performances

-Next on "Great Performances"... Legendary mezzo-soprano Grace Bumbry triumphed over racial barriers to become the toast of international opera.

-[ Singing in French ] -In 1954, at the age of 17, she won a radio contest's first-prize scholarship to the St.

Louis Institute of Music.

-Which refused her entrance because she was black.

-Yet Bumbry would not be stopped.

In 1961, she became the first African American to perform at Germany's revered Beyreuth Festival.

Her sensational performance in Wagner's "Tannhauser" made history.

Destiny came knocking when legendary Austrian maestro Herbert von Karajan cast Bumbry in the title role of Georges Bizet's classic opera of betrayal, "Carmen."

The 1966 Salzburg Festival production was recorded for television in a lavish film adaptation.

From that moment on, Carmen was a role she truly made her own.

-Grace was always a diva.

In the positive sense.

She didn't need to do very much different to go on the stage.

-Nothing -- absolutely nothing -- came between her and the performance.

-A quintessential diva and trailblazer whose dazzling artistry paved the way for future generations, "Great Performances" explores the magic of Grace Bumbry, next.

Major funding for "Great Performances" is provided by... ...and by contributions to your PBS station from viewers like you.

Thank you.

[ Bizet's "Gypsy Song" plays ] -The guy's dancing, yeah.

Voil.

But she doesn't have to do anything and she's still guiding that scene.

Her Carmen was unbeatable.

She was Carmen.

- Tra la la la la -She was Carmen.

When you understand and get to know who Grace Bumbry is, it's Carmen.

The men she loved, they know.

-Vienna, July 2023.

Just two months earlier, here in her adopted country of Austria, Grace Bumbry died at the age of 86.

In her heyday, Bumbry was one of the greatest voices and most expressive performers in the operatic world, both as mezzo-soprano and soprano.

She also conquered the stage at a time when this was the far from the norm for an African-American artist.

This is the last day before her apartment is due to be cleared.

Here, in her music room, she rehearsed and taught until the very end.

There was so much love and joy that happened here.

By the time I moved to Europe, I was 36.

We started to spend a lot of time together.

We began traveling together.

I became her publicist in 2003.

And in 2004, I asked her to be my mother, my surrogate mother.

And she said yes.

-Carmen was Grace Bumbry's signature role.

Herbert von Karajan's 1967 filmed production of the opera made history, in terms of musical and dramatic quality.

My most famous student, Beyonc Giselle Knowles, was 14.

I heard a little small voice in my ear that told me to teach her "Carmen."

I gave her Grace Bumbry's "Carmen" -- the CD -- and I told her to go listen to it.

She fell in love with Grace Bumbry's voice.

And then, one day, she was at my house and Grace Bumbry called.

She was having a lesson.

And she said, "Is that Grace Bumbry?

Grace Bumbry?!"

And I'm going... and she's like," Oh, my God!"

She's, like, having a fangirl moment.

She was going to be doing her first movie, "Hip Hop Carmen."

-The breath is like she's talking.

She's just speaking.

You understand?

The whole body is synchronized to what she is singing.

She is one with everything that's written there.

And the breath is guiding this.

-[ Chuckles ] -My collaboration with the Maestro was, um, sometimes rather fiery.

I remember we had a bit of an argument about the Habanera, the very beginning of the opera.

And he wanted it very slow.

-Who won?

-He won in that one, but I won in the tempo for the card aria.

-Okay.

-He wanted that somewhat faster, and I wanted it slower.

-Slower.

-Carmen is one of the most performed operas because it's a story that everybody can identify with.

It's about betrayal.

If you've never been betrayed, you can't perform it.

How do you handle betrayal?

Are you going to lose yourself, become a murderer?

How do you get out of a toxic relationship?

That's toxicity at its best.

-[ Humming ] Bah!

-I think Grace was always a diva, positive, in the positive sense of a diva.

She was always that.

And she didn't need to do very much different to go on the stage.

-She felt she had a responsibility to the fans to be their diva and to not be Grace Bumbry.

So you don't get to see the private Grace Bumbry that I got to know and love and fought with.

She could be a hellion.

Let me just tell you.

Nothing -- absolutely nothing -- came between her and the performance.

Don't call her after 10:00.

Don't cough.

Don't ask her to laugh.

Don't make her laugh.

[ Chuckles ] She would write notes three days before the performance.

I would be talking to her, and she would write the answer in a note.

She did not speak to me.

Discipline.

If you came between her and her performance, she would cut your head off.

Literally.

- Tra la, la la la la la la La la la la la la la, la la la la la la La la la la la la La la la la la la la la la la la la la La la la -She actually went to Andalusia for "Carmen," and she just observed the women.

She talked to me about the importance of character building -- how to build the character.

She never quite convinced me to do what she did, and that is to use makeup to make the character believable.

She took pictures in costume with makeup to show that it's about the authenticity and not skin color.

This is the Elisabeth, and she's white with blonde hair.

For Carmen, she lightened the skin to be more authentically Spanish.

Everything was about authenticity, and makeup was a huge, huge part of that.

-Grace Bumbry appeared destined for the opera stage, but her journey from St.

Louis, Missouri, to the opera houses of Europe was long and arduous.

-She knew what racism looked like.

She grew up with it.

That award that she won at 17 years old, the prize was a full scholarship to the St.

Louis Conservatory of Music, which refused her entrance because she was black.

This is the press clippings from the Bayreuth Venus.

-Grace Bumbry took the opera world by storm and, of all places, in Wagner's home of Bayreuth.

Bumbry made history as the first black singer to perform here.

In 1961, despite palpable racial hostility, she helped turn Wieland Wagner's production of "Tannhauser" into a triumph.

Her "Black Venus" made international headlines.

This was to be her major breakthrough.

-The black women, they've come in and -- and really given us this new look, so to say, on the stage because the white man could afford to have a black woman on the stage if he wanted.

If they pleased to show a romantic scene, it was okay if that woman was a black woman, but a black man doing a romantic scene?

Let's be honest, that was not earlier on.

[ Bizet's "Toreador's Song" plays ] -When Maestro Karajan cast her as his Carmen for the 1966 Salzburg Festival, he had just ventured into directing opera.

The successful festival production was captured on film as a studio adaptation, a favorable coincidence for Grace Bumbry's career.

-Karajan looked a long time, already from '65, he was looking, "Who was going to be my Carmen?"

And for him, it was important that she embody Carmen.

The nastiness, the sassiness, the sexiness, her movement.

She should be alluring.

I think that's the word Mommie said that he used -- "She must be alluring."

-Yes.

My favorite scene.

Now listen to this.

This piano is fantastic.

So natural.

Now listen to this, the next four bars.

Yes!

That's Grace right there.

okay?

That shoulder was Grace.

There you hear the future soprano.

That was the moment when you could hear that she was headed in that direction.

She didn't know it at that time.

Yes.

Thank you.

That was my favorite scene.

Because it had very little going on, but a heck of a lot going on from the inside out.

Yeah?

And funny enough, you could also see that in the eyes or the expression of John Vickers, that he got it.

He got it, yeah.

That was obvious for me, anyway.

I just loved him.

And he was strong as an ox, I have to say.

He was a strong man.

Well, he's from Canada.

You thought you would feel that you ran into a lumberjack, yeah?

Because bang!

Yeah?

He liked fiery women, yes?

He liked "feuer."

He liked women who had that "esprit," yeah?

He liked that.

And I think, along the way, they really connected.

I connected with him immediately.

-Carmen is not a very sympathetic character when you think about it.

She's manipulative.

She uses people.

She takes advantage of people.

It's all for her good.

[ Chuckles ] And when you understand and get to know who Grace Bumbry is, she got what she wanted.

She would walk into a room, and the men would be, "Ahhh..." She embodied -- she was Carmen.

He says, "I love you," at the end of his aria.

And she says, "No."

- Carmen - No -"I've -- I've given you -- What else do you want from me?

I've given you my soul.

I have nothing else to give you.

Please love me."

And she says, "No."

- No -Carmen has a motivation, and that's that he joins the group of bandits.

He's having an inner fight.

He's thinking about duty and honor.

And this is what happens in a narcissistic relationship.

The person who is the narcissist is manipulating and pulling you in and pulling you in and pulling you in.

She has poisoned him.

Her poison is running through his veins now.

He's no longer Don Jos.

-We were in a rehearsal.

And, you know, there was always a break.

There was a little break or something.

And I was -- I was mimicking him.

-[ Laughs ] -And so he saw -- he saw me, he says, "Aber Frau Bumbry, was machen sie da?"

I said, "Maestro, that's you.

That's you mixing the salad."

[ Both laugh ] -In the middle of the rehearsals, they had a problem.

And the problem was the arrival of her Lamborghini.

[ Chuckles ] Mr.

Lamborghini had promised Grace Bumbry that she would get a Lamborghini and that he would deliver it personally.

That day, on the rehearsal break, when everybody rushed to the window to see this Lamborghini, that Ferucio Lamborghini was getting out of, Karajan wondered what the heck was going on.

He was furious.

This is the Lamborghini.

You can see she's in her Carmen costume.

-She was never one of those card-playing type people.

Grace was a very religious girl.

I can imagine that, instead of the cards, she had that intuition going on, that feeling of spiritual intuition, yeah.

I would not think that she could have done that scene without the help of her spirituality.

-She said the human voice was God's instrument.

It was the only instrument that God created.

And that's why it meant so much to her to honor it.

-But the vocal cords are a delicate instrument.

Her star role of Carmen, of all things, turned out to be a threat to Bumbry's voice.

-She used to recover from singing "Carmen" like in two days, the normal recovery time.

At that particular time, when she started experiencing these "vocal problems," she was needing four or five days to recover.

So she said to her husband, "Something's off."

So they went to a specialist.

"Oh, my dear.

I see the problem.

You're not a mezzo-soprano.

You're soprano.

You need to stop singing 'Carmen.'"

Her husband was her manager, and he's hearing this, and he's getting already nervous because he knows she had hundreds of thousands of dollars of Carmens already booked years in advance.

So, she told her husband, "Cancel all Carmens."

-My husband and I had this problem.

He felt that I had to be a mezzo, and I felt that, "Listen, I can't force my voice to do one thing or the other.

I go where it wants to go.

And these two little things in here said to me, 'You have to follow the Soprano way.'"

And that's what I did.

That's why our marriage split up.

He insisted that I stay mezzo.

And I insisted that I follow my vocal chords.

And I think I was right.

-She had a long career going back and forth between soprano and mezzo-soprano.

-Despite the success of "Carmen," it would be Bumbry's only collaboration with Herbert von Karajan.

In 2013, Dominique Meyer, then the Director of the Vienna State Opera, enticed Grace Bumbry onto the stage one final time.

-We were both glamour girls.

What do you want?

Let me show you a photo.

[ Laughs ] This is a photo of us having fun.

She stayed with me here.

While she was here, America rang and told her that she would get the Kennedy Award.

We drank champagne that night.

I loved her.

I really did.

In that moment, I think she was... we were closer than ever before.

-To find out more about this and other "Great Performances" programs, visit pbs.org/greatperformances, and follow us on Facebook and Instagram.