Grace Bumbry, Audra McDonald, Bill Fontana

Published: June 17, 2017, 11:45 a.m.

b"

Sara Mohr-Pietsch meets two American singers - the opera icon Grace Bumbry and the broadway star Audra McDonald. Plus a conversation with the sound artist Bill Fontana in Snape, Suffolk, where he's created an installation modifying sounds from the reedbeds, marshes and the Maltings' industrial past, for this year's Aldeburgh Festival.

Grace Bumbry's career was launched when she won a competition at the tender age of 17. She was sought after across Europe and the USA as a mezzo soprano and later a soprano. Now aged 80, still actively coaching young singers, she's one of the jurors for the BBC Cardiff Singer of the World 2017. She talks about her life on stage and in the concert hall, and passes on the wisdom of her career.

"