Graves is one of opera's leading mezzo-sopranos.
She grew up in a tough neighborhood in Washington. Her single, God-fearing mother clothed and fed three children on a tight budget and shielded them from drugs and crime. Graves, who now lives in a Virginia suburb of Washington, studied at the Ohio's Oberlin Conservatory of Music and at the New England Conservatory. She was making considerable progress until a thyroid condition forced her to bow out of the Met's National Council Auditions. That was in 1986.