On January 1, 1975, I listened to a live broadcast of Bizet’s Carmen performance from the Gran Teatre del Liceu in Barcelona on a Telefunken tube receiver. I will never forget the intensity and passion that Grace Bumbry brought to play the lead role. In that season, Liceu presented four Carmen performances with different casts in the main roles. On January 1, Don José was Pedro Lavirgen. Two days before Elena Obratzova and Plácido Domingo, it was Carmen and Don José. I remember hearing not only that performance, but also two others: with Richard Tucker and Rosalind Elias, and with Gilbert Py and Joyce Davidson (December 25 and 29).
Louis, Missouri, Grace Bumbry died in Vienna at the age of 86. As fate would have it, his co-star Pedro Lavirgen from Cordoba died a little over a month ago in Madrid at the age of 92. This passionate couple seemed to me the most impressive of the four.
In 1967, Herbert von Karajan and the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra shot a Carmen with Jon Vickers as Don José and Karajan himself as stage director. It can be found today on a Unitel-Deutsche Grammophon DVD. Obratzova and Domingo also starred in a videotape with Carlos Kleiber in the musical (1978) of a Vienna Staatsoper production directed by Franco Zeffirelli. It is available on a DVD from the TDK label. The American singer had a brilliant career, replacing mezzo roles with other sopranos. She made her debut as an opera singer at the New York Metropolitan in 1960 in Aida’s Amneris (Verdi). But her major international projection came when she played the role of Venus in Wagner’s Tannhäuser at the Bayreuth Festival in 1961.
Bumbry’s Black Venus sparked protests and criticism from the most conservative factions in Germany. This was a decision of the composer’s granddaughter, Wieland Wagner, with which she became the first black woman to sing at the festival. It wasn’t until 1978 when Simon Estes played the lead role in The Flying Dutchman that he was the first black man to do so. Grace Bumbry sang in Bayreuth in 1961 and 1962. The performance, directed by Wolfgang Sawallisch on 3 August 1961, can be found on the Orfeo label from the original tapes of the live recording made by Radio Bavaria. Elisabeth was the Barcelona soprano Victoria de los Ángeles, Wolfgang Windgassen, Tannhäuser and Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau sang Wolfram von Eschenbach.
After World War II, the Bayreuth Festival was not held until 1951, when what was called New Bayreuth began. Richard’s grandchildren, Wieland and Wolfgang Wagner, sought to internationalize him and erase the pro-Nazi trace of years ruled by Siegfried’s widow, Winifed Wagner, who had been separated by the denazification courts.