Jessye Norman Interview (page: 2 / 9) Legendary Opera Soprano	Print Interview

When did you first know what you wanted to do? What drew you to singing and music?

Get the Flash Player to see this video. Jessye Norman: I understood about singing and music, of course, as I said, from a very early age, but I didn't understand about getting paid for singing, because as a child, of course, you get something to drink and two butter cookies as a "thank you" for coming to whatever it is and singing. That was even more than one expected, you know? You expected to have somebody shake your hand and say thank you and that was the kind of end of it. So the whole idea of becoming one of these people singing on the radio from the Metropolitan Opera on a Saturday, that was very far from my mind, because I had no idea as to how one would do that. But I did understand my other passion -- which remains a passion of mine -- which is medicine. It happens that the University of Georgia Medical School is in Augusta, Georgia, where I was born. So I saw people in white coats all the time, going back and forth. I understood about going to university and then going to medical school and then getting a job. So up until age 17 -- which by this time I had a scholarship to come to Howard University to study in the College of Fine Arts -- I was still making sure, as a student in high school, that I had the credits that I would need in order to go to liberal arts at Howard University and to prepare to go to pre-med.

So you were thinking of becoming a doctor?

Jessye Norman: Absolutely, very much so.

Did your parents know that?

Jessye Norman: Oh yes, absolutely.

Did they push you in that direction?

Get the Flash Player to see this video. Jessye Norman: I tell the story all the time about my mother coming through my bedroom, sometime in August of 19-ought... when I was getting ready to go to university and you know how it is if you're going off to university or something the first time or going off to camp, you start packing long before you're supposed to go. You think you've got so many things and such a lot of things to organize that you start very early. And this was the first time I'd had a locker, so I was very interesting in getting myself organized. This was weeks before I needed to show up in Washington, and my mother, who had a very special way of walking, sort of came through my bedroom. She said "Oh, darling. I'm not trying to tell you what to do, but you do have a full scholarship to study music at Howard University. But make up your own mind."

So she was really interested in your following a musical career.

Jessye Norman: Yes. Absolutely.

At that time, so many people were pushing our kids to get into the sciences.

Jessye Norman: Yes, and to have a sure way of earning a living. I was just very lucky, and we talk about this a great deal with my siblings, that our parents were so supportive without sort of being on our necks. How did they do that? All of my siblings have children and are raising wonderful, wonderful, interesting children that are involved in their professional lives, but also in their communities. They try very much to emulate what we learned at home, and that was to be there, but not pushing.

Did any of your siblings go into music as well?

Jessye Norman: No, they went into medicine. They saw those white coats too, but they participate very much in music. My older brother Silas, who's an internist -- and actually the Dean of Admissions at Wayne State University, the medical college there -- and a Professor of Internal Medicine, he sings in a choir. It's a professional choir. They sing with the Detroit Symphony and go on tour, so he's very much involved in music. My sister happens to have just come back from London -- I was working in Europe as well -- because she sings in Wynton Marsalis's choir. She's a nursing director, but she still sings. It's wonderful.

And you have maintained this interest in medicine. Did your interest in AIDS come from that?

Jessye Norman: Yes. I had the pleasure in Paris of meeting Dr. Montagnier who was at the very beginning of the scientific study of this incredible virus. In the early '80s, he was one of the doctors working on identifying and calling this something. To have conversations with him about, "How do you put something under a microscope that you've not ever seen before, that looks like something from hundreds of years ago because of the way it looks under the microscope, and you see that it is happening in bodies all over the world now, how do you even begin to identify it?" He says, "Just a little bit at a time until you can understand how it works, what it is. Is this a bacteria? Is this a virus? Is this something that can be stopped with antibiotics that are already in existence?" None of that proved to be true.

When did you first sing in public?

Get the Flash Player to see this video. Jessye Norman: The first time I recall singing in public I was in the second grade. I'm sure that I sang in church before that, but I don't really have a memory of that. But I remember being in second grade and the school -- it was a huge school in the segregated South, at least 1,200 kids in school from first grade to eighth grade at the time -- and every Friday the school would all come together in the auditorium, when the principal would tell you whether you've been good children or bad children and all the things you needed to do to be really good children. And so it was the responsibility of a class, out of the second grade or the third grade or the fourth grade, to present a kind of program on each of the Fridays. And it was now time for the second grade students to do this, and my teacher at the time said, "Well then, you should sing, Norman." I was always called by my last name because there were too many of us to remember our first names. And so she said, "You can sing, Norman, because you sing so loudly we won't have to sort of lower the microphone from the principal when you're singing on stage." I took it to be a compliment. Absolutely I took it to be a compliment.

How old were you?

Jessye Norman: I was seven. Second grade.

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