In the winter of 1975 a remarkable memory was formed when a live broadcast from the Gran Teatre del Liceu in Barcelona carried Bizet’s Carmen across the airwaves via a Telefunken tube receiver. The intensity and passion brought by Grace Bumbry in the lead role left an enduring imprint. That season the Liceu staged four different Carmen performances featuring distinct casts in the principal parts. The first January performance cast Don José as Pedro Lavirgen. Just two days earlier, Elena Obratzova and Plácido Domingo presented the roles of Carmen and Don José. That same period included two additional performances with Richard Tucker and Rosalind Elias, and with Gilbert Py and Joyce Davidson on Christmas Eve and the day after Christmas.
Grace Bumbry, who hailed from a family of performers in Missouri, passed away in Vienna at age eighty six. Coincidentally, her co star Pedro Lavirgen, who originated the Cordoba connection, had died a little over a month prior in Madrid at age ninety two. That duet on stage left a lasting impression, seemingly eclipsing the other two pairings from that quartet of performances.
Further back in history, a 1967 collaboration between Herbert von Karajan and the Vienna Philharmonic produced a Carmen with Jon Vickers as Don José and Karajan taking the helm as stage director. This version remains accessible today on a Unitel Deutsche Grammophon DVD. Obratzova and Domingo also featured in a videotaped production of the Vienna State Opera staging directed by Franco Zeffirelli in 1978, released on DVD by the TDK label. The American singer built a brilliant career by stepping into soprano roles that had previously been entrusted to mezzo sopranos. Her operatic debut at New York’s Metropolitan Opera occurred in the 1960 season with Aida as Amneris, yet her broader international prominence surged when she portrayed Venus in Wagner’s Tannhäuser at the Bayreuth Festival in 1961.
Grace Bumbry’s portrayal of the Black Venus stirred protests and criticism from the most conservative factions in Germany, a clash tied to Wieland Wagner’s decision to cast her in the role inspired by the composer’s granddaughter. She became the first Black woman to sing at Bayreuth. It would not be until 1978 that Simon Estes would break a similar racial barrier by taking the title role in The Flying Dutchman. Bumbry’s Bayreuth performances occurred in the early 1960s, with a documented staging directed by Wolfgang Sawallisch on August 3, 1961. This live recording, preserved on archives from Radio Bavaria, later appeared on the Orfeo label. Within that same era, the Barcelona soprano Victoria de los Ángeles joined the scene, including collaborators such as Wolfgang Windgassen and Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau in the Wagner repertoire, notably Tannhäuser and Wolfram von Eschenbach respectively.
In the aftermath of World War II, the Bayreuth Festival paused for several years before resuming in 1951, inaugurating what many scholars call New Bayreuth. Wieland and Wolfgang Wagner sought to broaden Bayreuth’s reach and to reframe its history away from the Nazi-era associations that stained earlier years under Siegfried Wagner’s widow, Winifred Wagner, who faced denazification scrutiny. The broader shift reflected a conscious effort to reintroduce the festival as a global cultural cornerstone rather than a symbol of a troubled past.