Jessye Mae Norman (September 15, 1945 – September 30, 2019) was an American opera singer and recitalist. She was able to perform dramatic soprano roles, but did not limit herself to that voice type. A commanding presence on operatic, concert and recital stages, Norman was associated with roles including Beethoven's Leonore, Wagner's Sieglinde and Kundry, Berlioz's Cassandre and Didon, and Bartók's Judith. The New York Times music critic Edward Rothstein described her voice as a "grand mansion of sound" that "has enormous dimensions, reaching backward and upward. It opens onto unexpected vistas. It contains sunlit rooms, narrow passageways, cavernous halls."
Norman trained at Howard University, the Peabody Institute, and the University of Michigan. Her career began in Europe, where she won the ARD International Music Competition in Munich in 1968, which led to a contract with the Deutsche Oper Berlin. Her operatic début came as Elisabeth in Wagner's Tannhäuser, after which she sang as Verdi's Aida at La Scala in Milan. She made her first operatic appearance in the U.S. in 1982 with the Opera Company of Philadelphia, when cast as Jocasta in Stravinsky's Oedipus rex, and as Dido in Purcell's Dido and Aeneas. She went on to sing leading roles with many other companies, including the Metropolitan Opera, the Lyric Opera of Chicago, the Paris Opera, and the Royal Opera, London. Internationally well known, she was invited to sing at the second inauguration of Ronald Reagan and at Queen Elizabeth II's 60th birthday celebration in 1986 and performed La Marseillaise to celebrate the 200th anniversary of the French Revolution on July 14, 1989. She sang at the 1996 Summer Olympics opening ceremony in Atlanta and for the second inauguration of Bill Clinton in 1997.
Norman sang and recorded recitals of music by Joseph Haydn, Franz Schubert, Johannes Brahms, Richard Strauss, Gustav Mahler, Ernest Chausson, and Francis Poulenc, among others. In 1984, she won the Grammy Award for Best Classical Vocal Solo, the first of five Grammy Awards that she would collect during her career. Apart from several honorary doctorates and other awards, she received the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award, the National Medal of Arts, the , and was named a member of the British Royal Academy of Music. In 1990, UN secretary-general Javier Pérez de Cuéllar named her Honorary Ambassador to the United Nations.
Life and career Early life and musical education Norman was born in Augusta, Georgia, to Silas Norman, an insurance salesman, and Janie King-Norman, a schoolteacher. She was one of five children in a well-to-do Black family of amateur musicians; her mother and grandmother were both pianists, and her father sang in a local choir. Norman and all of her siblings received piano lessons as children. Norman attended Charles T. Walker Elementary School. She proved to be a talented singer as a young child, singing gospel songs at Mount Calvary Baptist Church at the age of four. At church, she was greatly influenced by the singing of two women, Mrs. Golden and Sister Childs. At the age of seven, she entered her first vocal competition, placing third because of a memory slip in the second stanza of the hymn "God Will Take Care of You". She later said in interviews, "I guess He has taken care of me. That was my last memory slip in public."
When Norman was nine she was given a radio for her birthday and soon discovered the world of opera through the weekly broadcasts of the Metropolitan Opera, which she listened to every Saturday. She started listening to recordings of Marian Anderson and Leontyne Price, both of whom Norman credited as inspiring figures in her career. She received her first formal vocal coaching from Rosa Harris Sanders Creque, who was her music teacher at A. R. Johnson Junior High School. She continued to take voice lessons privately with Ms. Sanders Creque while attending Lucy C. Laney Senior High School in downtown Augusta.
Norman studied at the Interlochen Center for the Arts in Northern Michigan in the opera performance program. At the age of 16, she entered the Marian Anderson Vocal Competition in Philadelphia which, although she did not win, led to an offer of a full scholarship at Howard University, in Washington, D.C. While at Howard, studying voice with Carolyn Grant, she sang in the university chorus and as a soloist at the Lincoln Temple United Church of Christ."After 149 Years, A Historic Black Church In Shaw Closes Its Doors", The Kojo Nnamdi Show, WAMU, October 2, 2018.
In 1964, she became a member of Gamma Sigma Sigma and served as president of the Alpha Eta chapter.
In 1965, along with 33 other female students and four female faculty, Norman became a founding member of the Delta Nu chapter of Sigma Alpha Iota music fraternity. In 1966, she won the National Society of Arts and Letters singing competition.Past Winners , National Society of Arts and Letters. After graduating in 1967 with a degree in music, she began graduate studies at the Peabody Conservatory in Baltimore and later at the University of Michigan School of Music, Theatre & Dance in Ann Arbor, Michigan, from which she earned a master's degree in 1968. During this time, Norman studied voice with Elizabeth Mannion and Pierre Bernac.
Early career (1968–1979) After graduating, Norman, like many American young musicians at the time, moved to Europe to establish herself. In 1968, she won the ARD International Music Competition in Munich. The following year, she began a three-year contract with the Deutsche Oper Berlin, where she first appeared as Elisabeth in Wagner's Tannhäuser.
Norman performed as a guest with German and Italian opera companies, often portraying noble characters convincingly, both by appearance and by unique voice which was both flexible and powerful. Her voice range was wide, from contralto registers to dramatic soprano. In 1970, she appeared in Florence in the title role in Handel's Deborah. In 1971, she sang at the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino in the role of Sélika in Meyerbeer's L'Africaine. The same year, she portrayed Countess Almaviva in Mozart's Le nozze di Figaro, alongside Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau as the count at the Berlin Festival, and recorded the role with the BBC Orchestra conducted by Colin Davis. The recording was a finalist for the Montreux International Record Award competition and exposed her to music listeners in Europe and the United States.
In 1972, Norman made her first appearance at La Scala, where she sang the title role in Verdi's Aida and at The Royal Opera at Covent Garden, London, where she appeared as Cassandra in Les Troyens by Berlioz. Norman was Aida again in a concert version that same year in her first well-publicized American performance at the Hollywood Bowl for the venue's 50th anniversary celebration. This was followed by an all-Wagner concert at the Tanglewood Music Festival in Lenox, Massachusetts, and a recital tour of the country, after which she returned to Europe for several engagements. Norman briefly returned to the United States to give her first New York City recital as part of the "Great Performers" series in Alice Tully Hall at Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts in 1973.
In 1975, Norman moved to London and had no staged opera appearances for the next five years. She remained internationally active as a recitalist and soloist in works such as Mendelssohn's Elijah and Franck's Les Béatitudes. Norman returned to North America again in 1976 and 1977 to make an extensive concert tour. Norman toured Europe throughout the 1970s, giving recitals of works by Schubert, Mahler, Wagner, Brahms, Satie, Messiaen, and several contemporary American composers, to great critical acclaim.Jessye Norman, African American World, PBS. Article by Encyclopaedia Britannica.
Mid-career (1980–1989)
In October 1980, Norman returned to the operatic stage in the title role of Ariadne auf Naxos by Richard Strauss at the Hamburg State Opera in Germany. Her first operatic appearance in the United States came in 1982 at the Opera Company of Philadelphia, where she appeared as Jocasta in Stravinsky's Oedipus rex, and as Purcell's Dido. On July 18 she sang Didon in a concert performance of the second part of Berlioz's Les Troyens (as Les Troyens à Carthage), conducted by Gennady Rozhdestvensky. The performance was broadcast on BBC Radio 3, and an audio recording exists.Recordings of Les Troyens on operadis-opera-discography.org.uk
Her stage debut at the Metropolitan Opera in New York City was on September 26, 1983, the opening night of the company's 100th-anniversary season, when she portrayed Cassandre in Berlioz's Les Troyens with Plácido Domingo as Aeneas, Tatiana Troyanos as Didon, and James Levine conducting."Les Troyens, September 26, 1983" , Met Opera Archive. According to Donal Henahan, the music critic of The New York Times, "she sang grippingly and projected well, even when placed well back in the cavernous sets." The fourth performance, with the same cast, was telecast as part of the Live from the Met series.Les Troyens (October 8, 1983) , Met Opera Archive: "This performance was videotaped and televised later. Because of a technical failure during Act II, a portion of the performance of October 4 was utilized for the transmission." A video recording has been issued on DVDDeutsche Grammophon DVD: Met's Les Troyens (October 8, 1983). . and is available for streaming at the Met Opera on Demand website."Les Troyens" (October 8, 1983), Met Opera on Demand. On October 12 and 17, the fifth and sixth performances in the run of nine, she sang Didon with William Lewis as Aeneas and Gwynn Cornell as Cassandre.Les Troyens (October 12, 1983) , Met Opera Archive; Les Troyens (October 17, 1983) , Met Opera Archive. Reviewing the October 12 performance, Edward Rothstein of The New York Times reported that "she created a Carthaginian Queen who was both regal and vulnerable. It was a subtle and affecting dramatic portrait.... Her farewell aria was fluid and seductive, suggesting in its timbre both sensuous pleasures and death." On February 8, the seventh performance of the series, she returned to the role of Cassandre, with Edward Sooter as Aeneas and Troyanos as Didon, but replaced Troyanos as Didon for act 5.Les Troyens (February 8, 1984) , Met Opera Archive. [For this entire series of performances the Met combined acts 1 and 2 into "Act I", combined acts 3 and 4 into "Act II" and numbered act 5 as "Act III" ("From The Metropolitan Opera Archives: Les Troyens 1983-84" ).] On February 13, the eighth performance, she again sang Didon, with Sooter as Aeneas and Cornell as Cassandre,Les Troyens (February 13, 1984) , Met Opera Archive. and on February 18, the ninth and final performance of the series, she sang both Cassandre and Didon, with Sooter as Aeneas.Les Troyens (February 18, 1984) , Met Opera Archive. Regarding the last performance, The New York Times reported that "the audience gave Miss Norman a 15-minute standing ovation that brought her back to the stage more than a half dozen times." The performance was broadcast on the Metropolitan Opera Radio, and an audio recording is available."Les Troyens" (18 February 1984), Met Opera on Demand.