Music: Command Performance

"If I go to dinner," said the diva. "I'll eat and not sing very well." But this was no ordinary invitation, and so Mezzo-Soprano Grace Bumbry, 25, took her place at President Kennedy's table in the state dining room of the White House, dutifully nibbled at the first course and at the dessert. Then she adjourned with the other guests to the East Room and soared flawlessly through the most important recital of her career.

Singing magnificently in her rich, bronzelike voice, she began with O del mio dolce ardor, by Gluck, went on to Quella fiamma che m'accende, by Benedetto Marcello, Ständchen and Zueignung, by Richard Strauss. Invitation au Voyage and Le Manoir de Rosamonde, by Henri du Pare, Boatmen's Dance, by Aaron Copland. Out in the Fields with God, by William Dawson.

Jackie Kennedy had extended the invitation after hearing from friends of Mezzo Bumbry's triumphs in Europe. The daughter of a St. Louis railway clerk, Grace Bumbry began her career the way American Negroes often do: singing in the choir of a colored Methodist church. She studied with Lotte Lehmann in Santa Barbara, Calif. But her career did not really get under way until she took the $1,000 in prize money she won as Metropolitan Opera Auditions finalist and departed in 1959 for Europe. There she got opera engagements in Paris, Brussels and Basel, last summer became the first Negro ever to sing at the Bayreuth Festival —as Venus in Tannhäuser (TIME, Aug. 4).

Her encore at the end of her White House recital last week was a reminder of an earlier milestone in her career: it was O don fatale from Verdi's Don Carlos, the aria with which, at 17, she had launched her career on the Arthur Godfrey talent show.