She was one of the first and foremost African-American opera singers.

Grace Babri, who passed away last Sunday at the age of 86, was not only a magnificent mezzo-soprano with an enviable vocal range, but also a symbol for millions of people, artists and non-artists alike. And it was not that the place of her origin helped her. Born in isolated St. Louis, Babri didn’t exactly see the people she thought of becoming opera singers. Despite all this, her original talent was impossible to limit, so she appeared at the Paris Opera at the age of 23, performing the part of Amneris in Verdi’s Aida.

Europe still welcomed Wieland Wagner, the grandson of Richard Wagner, notorious for his racist views, by the way, who played Venus in the play Tannhäuser. Audiences and critics alike adored this “Black Venus”, where Babri was deified on stage for half an hour, and the German newspapers of the time spoke of a “great breakthrough”.
Her success did not go unnoticed even in America, where Jackie Kennedy invited her to sing at an official White House dinner in February 1962 in the presence of President Kennedy, Vice President Lyndon Johnson and distinguished guests. It’s time to debut in the sparkling Carnegie Hall. “She can easily go from the highest note to a beautiful deep tone,” wrote the New York Times, and she soon decided to make them say even more. Although she was classified as a mezzo-soprano as a singer, at the peak of her vocal abilities she also managed to get soprano parts, such as those of Salome or Tosca, in the works of the same name by Strauss and Puccini, respectively. “She can play Tosca and Salome with the same ease as Carmen,” critics wrote with trepidation.

However, praise and recognition were not enough for Grace Babri, who had experienced both racism and injustice earlier in her life because of her skin color. So when she became a real opera diva, she had no problem acting like a diva, whether on stage or off stage, wearing the most expensive designer clothes and driving around in a roaring Lamborghini. And when in 1970 she was invited to perform Salome again at the Royal Opera House in London, she made sure that the press spread that in the famous “Dance of the Seven Veils” she was going to completely undress, leaving only her “perfume and jewelry” . In the end it turned out that the jewels in question were enough to cover all points of contention, however, as she later stated in an interview, “never in the history of Covent Garden have so many binoculars been sold.”