Grace Bumbry to receive Kennedy Center Honors
Grace Bumbry
The great mezzo-soprano and St. Louis native Grace Bumbry will be one of the recipients of the 2009 Kennedy Center Honors.
The other recipients of the 32nd edition of the Honors, to be to be honored at the 32nd annual national celebration of the arts, are theatrical multitasker Mel Brooks, pianist Dave Brubeck, actor Robert De Niro and rocker Bruce Springsteen.
The Honors Gala will take place on Sunday, December 6 at Washington, DC’s Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, and broadcast nationally on PBS on December 29.
Bumbry has a storied history: denied a scholarship she’d won to a St. Louis music school because of her race, she then received a more prestigious one. She made operatic history as the first black singer, the hugely sexy “schwarze Venus” in Wagner’s Tannhauser, at the famed Bayreuth Festspiel in Germany. Bumbry, who now lives in Europe, has been consistently generous to St. Louis over the years.
She’s the auntie of a friend of mine…glad to see her get her due.
So am I. I was the cover for the Page in “Salome” at Lyric Opera of Chicago when she did the title role - she had a fearsome reputation, but she could not have been kinder. She is a great lady.