Reri Grist

Reri Grist, born February 29, 1932, in New York City, is an American coloratura soprano recognized as one of the pioneering African-American singers to build a major international opera career. She grew up in the East River Housing Projects, attended the High School of Music & Art with a concentration in voice, and earned a Bachelor of Arts in music from Queens College, City University of New York.

Grist's performing career began on Broadway in her early teens, where she took on small roles alongside Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee. Her Broadway credits span 1946 to 1957 and include the 1946 play Jeb, as well as The Wisteria Trees, The Barrier, Shinbone Alley, and West Side Story. During those formative years she also appeared in musicals with Eartha Kitt while studying voice with her teacher Claire Gelda. Her first operatic engagement was a concert performance of Mozart's Der Schauspieldirektor, in which she sang Madame Herz, and her first staged operatic role came in 1956 as Cindy Lou in Carmen Jones, Oscar Hammerstein's adaptation of Bizet's Carmen.

In 1957, Grist originated the role of Consuelo in Leonard Bernstein's West Side Story, introducing the song "Somewhere" in that production and recording it on the original cast album. Three years later, Bernstein engaged her to perform the soprano part in Mahler's Symphony No. 4 in G major with the New York Philharmonic at a Young People's Concert at Carnegie Hall. She subsequently appeared with that orchestra under Bernstein, Nadia Boulanger, Pierre Boulez, and Michael Gielen.

Her operatic stage debut came at the Santa Fe Opera in 1959, where she sang Adele in Die Fledermaus and Blondchen in Die Entführung aus dem Serail. Igor Stravinsky attended one of those performances and invited her to perform his Le Rossignol with him conducting at the Washington Opera Society. Her European debut followed in 1960 at the Cologne Opera, where she sang the Queen of the Night in The Magic Flute. From 1960 to 1966 she held membership at the Zurich Opera, adding Zerbinetta in Ariadne auf Naxos, Sophie in Der Rosenkavalier, Adina in L'elisir d'amore, and Gilda in Rigoletto to her repertoire.

Her Covent Garden debut came in Le Coq d'Or, and she appeared at the Glyndebourne Festival in 1962. The Vienna State Opera followed in 1963, where she performed across twenty-five seasons. That same year she made her San Francisco Opera debut as Rosina in Il barbiere di Siviglia, returning for twelve consecutive seasons and taking on Oscar in Un ballo in maschera, Manon in Massenet's Manon, and Susanna in Le nozze di Figaro. In 1964, Grist debuted as Zerbinetta at the Salzburg Festival, where she performed throughout twelve seasons in Mozart and Richard Strauss operas conducted by Karl Böhm, Zubin Mehta, and Herbert von Karajan.

On February 25, 1966, Grist made her Metropolitan Opera debut as Rosina in Il barbiere di Siviglia, going on to sing Gilda, Oscar, Olympia, Sophie, and Zerbinetta there across thirteen seasons. From 1965 to 1987 she performed regularly at the Bayerische Staatsoper Munich in new productions including Die schweigsame Frau, Falstaff, Le nozze di Figaro, and Il barbiere di Siviglia. Guest engagements took her to the Lyric Opera of Chicago, Deutsche Oper Berlin, La Scala Milan, Buenos Aires, the Holland Festival, and Die Wiener Festwochen.

Grist concluded her operatic career in 1991 with two engagements: the one-woman opera Neither, by Morton Feldman and Samuel Beckett and directed by Pierre Audi, at De Nederlandse Opera in Amsterdam, and the role of the Italian Singer in the San Francisco Opera's production of Richard Strauss's Capriccio. Her film credits include televised productions of Ariadne auf Naxos (1965), Le nozze di Figaro (1966), Die schweigsame Frau (1972), Don Pasquale (1972), Un ballo in maschera (1975), Die Entführung aus dem Serail (1980), and the documentary Reri Grist – Singer (1976), directed by Axel Corti.

Following her performing career, Grist held professorships in voice at the Indiana University Bloomington School of Music and at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater Munich. She received the title of Bayerische Kammersängerin in 1976 and a Legacy Award from the American Opera Association in 2001. She resides in Germany with her husband, orchestra administrator Dr. Ulf Thomson.